User:Soflabo/The Tea
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The Tea, also referred to as Five O’Clock Tea,[1] is an oil canvas painting of two women having tea by the American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.[2] The role of gender in the Le Thé,[2] The Tea in French, has been the subject of differing interpretations among art historians. Sinéad Furlong-Clancy suggests that composition of the women featured in painting reflects a deep "sense of compression."[3] Griselda Pollock describes the confined interior as an evocation of the spatial and social constraints placed on women at the time.[4] Norma Broude asks whether the work might contain "possibilities for empowerment," showing the agency that women exercised through sociability.[5] And John Loughery argues that the intention behind Cassatt's work might always remain a mystery.[1]