Talk:Little Girl in a Blue Armchair

Untitled
This article seems to run way beyond its scope. The entry is about a particular painting, and the article begins well enough. But, 95% of the middle section is a discussion of the relationship between Cassatt and Degas that doesn't really relate to the painting other than to mention to Degas once gave Cassatt a dog like the one shown in the painting. The next section then swings back to being topical with a discussion of the reviews of the painting. Also, there are two galleries of paintings that have no apparent connection to the work at issue. Does anyone want to speak up for the bulk of this entry before I cut the vast majority of it (and perhaps move it to other articles)? ProfReader (talk) 13:04, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, you have made a good point. The material seems to be of quality and referenced, but is unlikely to be found here by most readers who are looking for biographical information on Cassatt.  Reify-tech (talk) 22:15, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I thought it was good quality too, so I moved almost all of it to the article about Cassatt herself, where it belongs. Someone just reverted those changes without adding any comment to this discussion and without also removing it from its new home (where it belongs), so I've struck it out again.ProfReader (talk) 01:05, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I provided the article expansion here (I am also the "someone" referred to above). I am amongst a group of Wikpedians anxious to improve Wikipedia's coverage of women artists. Not providing this material in Cassatt's BLP was a conscious decision because Cassatt's relationship with Degas was but a part of her life as an artist, covering a span of less than a decade. She exhibited with the Impressionists essentially as a reaction against the Salon and quickly moved away from them. Degas' influence was adequately covered in that article and if I recall right the material here linked as a "See also". At any rate from its inception this material has been linked in Cassatt's navigation box in the "Life" section under the heading "Relationship with Degas". To move the material to her article unbalances her article and does her life a disservice. Historically she has all too often been seen wholly as an American impressionist under Degas' tutelage.

The material however does emphatically belong here because Little Girl in an Armchair was the first fruit of that relationship, acknowledged by all commentators as such. Degas himself worked on the portrait. In several of her sources the painting is treated as the starting point for discussing Degas' influence on her work. The whole point of the expansion I provided was to provide that discussion.

I really have no idea why an editor who does not normally contribute to the visual arts is blanking sections here in this way. I ask him (her) to desist and I would appreciate it if he removed the material from Cassatt's article and restored the link to this article.

Thank you. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 03:25, 20 July 2014 (UTC)


 * But this information has nothing to do with this painting. There isn't even a statement in here that documents that this was her first painting after establishing a relationship with Degas. IF you can document that (and more importantly, that that relationship impacted this particular work), then I'd agree that there's some reason to have SOME of this in here, but the vast majority of it applies to LOTS of her paintings. You could repeat the same information about any number of paintings that were touched by her association with Degas, and yet someone interested in that impact would have no reason to pick this one painting to learn about it. If you think that having it in the article about the artist herself overshadows her own accomplishments, then the place to fix that is in the article about her and her accomplishments by beefing up those things. Significant information about an artists and their influences should not be moved to a different place primarily because of its editorial impact; that starts to veer pretty far away from objective reporting of facts. And then also look at the illustrations that have been selected. What does a piece by Degas from years later say about Little Girl in a Blue Armchair? I'm not saying that there is NO connection, but just dropping images by a different artist into an article about a specific painting without any explanation of what a reader would learn about the subject painting isn't doing anyone, Degas or Cassatt, any favors.ProfReader (talk) 03:47, 20 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm sure you're entitled your views. Nevertheless I ask you not to delete entire sections from the article. As I stress, from the outset the purpose of the expansion was to enlarge on their relationship, linked as such in Cassatt's article and in her navigation box. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 04:44, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

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