Berthe Morisot

French, 1841-1895

Femme cousant (Woman Sewing), ca. 1879

oil on canvas

support: 25 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches (65.405 x 54.61 cm); framed: 34 3/8 x 29 3/4 x 3 1/2 inches (87.31 x 75.56 x 8.89 cm)

Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Fellows for Life Fund, 1926

1926:1

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Inscriptions

signature, undated / front, upper left / B. Morisot

Provenance

collection Count Armand Doria;
May 5, 1899, joint purchase by Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris and Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, for 3200 French francs, from the Doria collection sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, May 4-5 and 8-9, 1899, no. 194;
October 26, 1900, Bernheim-Jeune acquires full interest in the work by purchasing Galerie Durand-Ruel's interest.
until 1913, Alexander Rosenberg [1921-1987], Paris;
Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York-Paris;
January 23, 1926, purchased by the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo

Class

Paintings

Work Type

Oil painting

This information may change due to ongoing research. Glossary of Terms

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, who persuaded her to paint outdoors. During the early 1860s, Morisot became friends with Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883) and began showing in the 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.