Femme cousant (Woman Sewing)

One of the few female painters associated with Impressionism, Berthe Morisot created a niche for herself with instinctive paintings of domestic life. She mainly painted intimate portraits of women and children rendered in a delicately harmonious color palette. At a young age, her mother encouraged her to develop her talent. Morisot spent hours at the Louvre copying Old Master paintings, and she studied under Barbizon painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796–1875), who persuaded her to paint outdoors. During the early 1860s, Morisot became friends with Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883) and began showing in the annual Salon. In 1874, she was invited to exhibit in the first Impressionist exhibition and ultimately participated in seven of the Impressionists’ eight group exhibitions. “Woman Sewing” depicts a female figure in profile whose head is bowed while absorbed in her work. She performs this apparently routine, unselfconscious activity silhouetted against the backdrop of a distinctly bourgeois interior. This resplendent composition embodies the quintessential traits of Impressionist painting—a quotidian subject, a seemingly unprompted composition, rapid brushwork, and a unifying light that rakes across the canvas, weaving in and out of colored daubs.