Painted portrait dominated by loose, large brushstrokes of a woman, seen from the back, wearing a gauzy white off-the-shoulder dress and black choker, blond hair swept up, examining herself in a mirror at left. The background is a feathered swirl suggesting floral pattern in cool pale tones of gray, purple, pink, and blue.

Woman at Her Toilette

1875–80

Berthe Morisot (French, 1841–1895)

France

In Woman at Her Toilette, Berthe Morisot provided a glimpse into the private life of a Parisienne—one of the fashionable, urban women who epitomized modernity in late nineteenth-century France. The ﬁgure is shown at her vanity table after a ball, still wearing her earrings and a velvet ribbon around her neck as she reaches up to take down her chignon hairstyle. In the background, Morisot’s soft, feathery brushstrokes suggest a ﬂ oral-patterned bedspread and wallpaper. The artist applied the same gauzy technique to the mirror, obscuring the ﬁ gure’s reﬂection and thus disrupting the trope of women gazing into mirrors as a symbol of vanity. Morisot signed her name along the bottom of the mirror, an enigmatic detail that may suggest that the ﬁgure is a stand-in for the artist herself.

Consistent with the Impressionist aesthetic that Morisot fervently espoused, In Woman at Her Toilette attempts to capture the essence of modern life in summary, understated terms. Morisot exhibited in seven of the eight Impressionist group shows; in 1880 this painting was included in the ﬁfth exhibition, where her work received high acclaim. In addition to domestic interiors such as this one, Morisot’s pictorial realm included studies of women and children, gardens, ﬁelds, and vacation homes by the sea.

Oil on canvas

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Essentials

Women artists