Woman at Her Toilette

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.