A Woman and Child in a Garden

This painting belongs to a series of works from 1883 and 1884 showing the artist’s daughter, Julie Manet, and a nurse or female companion. The composition appears to imitate the natural focus of the eye, becoming more sketch-like and indistinct towards the periphery. The device of the central tree, dividing the canvas into two distinct spheres, evokes the separate worlds of the nurse and child and may indicate the influence of Japanese prints. Morisot spent the summers of 1880 to 1884 at a house in Bougival, northwest of Paris, and also painted frequently in the Bois de Boulogne. This painting was probably painted in one of these locations.