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Reasons to Admire The First Female Impressionist
Light capturing moments in time
Let’s take a look at this delicate painting. It shows a woman sitting in an untamed garden, absorbed in a book. Her face has been painted with the most minimal detail, just the trace of a nose, the merest smudge of a mouth.
It’s as if the act of reading has quietened her personal countenance to a state of tranquillity. And yet the painting is by no means short of feeling or animation. As her eyes dip to read the words on the page, the textures of the green field and the brightness of her white dress resonate with energy.
Berthe Morisot painted this image in 1873 when she was around 32 years old. It was a crucial time in her artistic career. The year before, the avant-garde dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had bought four of her pictures.
The woman depicted in the image is Morisot’s sister, Edma. She is dressed in fashionable clothing, with a foldable hand fan to her left and a deep-green umbrella to her right, both discarded in favour of the book — perhaps a novel. All of her attention is on the written page. Behind her, rolling by unnoticed, is a horse and cart.
