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Reading

1873

Berthe Morisot

(French, 1841–1895)
Culture
France, 19th century
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
Framed: 74.3 x 100.3 x 12.1 cm (29 1/4 x 39 1/2 x 4 3/4 in.); Unframed: 46 x 71.8 cm (18 1/8 x 28 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of the Hanna Fund 1950.89
Public Domain
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Location
On view at Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA, Oct 11, 2025 - Feb 15, 2026
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Did You Know?

The Impressionists were mostly men with a few notable exceptions, including Berthe Morisot. While Morisot's work includes many of the hallmarks of Impressionism, such as her loose brushwork, the subject matter of her paintings often reflects the social constraints of her gender. Her paintings often depicted domestic tableaux or images of her friends and family, such as this painting of her sister.

Description

The fashionable woman seated in the foreground is the artist's sister, Edma. However, the painting is not a portrait. Morisot's principal concern was to render a figure in a natural, outdoor environment. Edma's white dress—the prime vehicle for Morisot's study of reflected light—is saturated with delicate lavender, blue, yellow, and rose tonalities. Deftly executed with quick brushstrokes, the painting resounds with a feeling of freshness, vibrancy, and delicate charm. "Every day I pray that the Good Lord will make me like a child," Morisot wrote, "That is to say, that He will make me see nature and render it the way a child would, without preconceptions." Morisot, the great-granddaughter of the 18th-century French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, selected this painting as one of her four works shown in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874.
Horizontally oriented oil painting in loose brushstrokes depicting Edma, a woman with light skin tone seated reading a blue book in a white dress on a pink blanket over grass. The dress, blanket, and grass are all patterned with flecks of paint suggesting fine flowers. Edma, her facial features only hazily suggested, wears a hat with a green veil hanging down. An open fan lays in the grass on our right, the same light brown the grass transitions to in the background.

Reading

1873

Berthe Morisot

(French, 1841–1895)
France, 19th century

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