Woman at Her Toilette

Woman at Her Toilette, oil painting created about 1875/80 by French artist Berthe Morisot. This Impressionist work has been likened to a visual poem and is one of the artist’s best-known works. It may have been first exhibited in 1875 during the second of the eight exhibitions put on by the Impressionists.

Morisot is the only female painter who is consistently included in discussions about the Impressionists. A descendant of the Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, she was born into a wealthy family and grew up in an artistic home, but nonetheless her family was shocked by her choice to become a professional artist. In 1862, she became a student of Camille Corot, whose work was her chief influence until she met Édouard Manet in 1868. Theirs was to prove a lasting friendship; she was accepted into his social group and went on to marry Manet’s brother in 1874. Morisot’s The Cradle (1872), showing an exhausted mother rocking her baby’s crib, was included in the first Impressionist exhibition, in 1874.

The Impressionists’ desire to perfect the ways in which light was portrayed is apparent in Woman at her Toilette. The manner in which the light changes when it falls upon the woman’s skin, in contrast to the way it falls upon her dress, is masterful, and the exquisite delicacy of her use of color in the painting was admired by her fellow Impressionists. Like Manet, Morisot was slightly more reserved in her method than the other Impressionists, preferring to work in a more accurate, less abstract style. Her paintings often concentrate on women, either as portraits or, like this one, as more general studies of women and their private lives.