In the Dining Room

Berthe Morisot

Oil on canvas

National Gallery of Art

In the Dining Room is an oil-on-canvas painting by French Impressionist artist Berthe Morisot, completed in 1886 and exhibited that same year at the eighth and final major Impressionist exhibition in Paris. The work depicts a young woman—identified as Pasie, the artist's household maid and her daughter's nanny—standing at ease in a light-filled domestic interior, accompanied by a small white-and-tan dog at her feet and a partially visible table set with a decanter and fruit. Morisot's characteristically energetic, bristly brushwork suffuses the scene with a sense of spontaneous movement while simultaneously conveying a sense of calm through the intimacy of the subject matter. As one of the foremost women in the Impressionist circle, Morisot distinguished herself by focusing on interior domestic life—a sphere she rendered with psychological subtlety and formal boldness rather than sentimentality.