Young Woman and Child

Berthe Morisot

Oil on canvas

Musée Marmottan Monet

Young Woman and Child (1894) is an oil painting by Berthe Morisot depicting a softly lit interior scene in which a young woman and a child share an intimate, tender moment, their figures rendered in Morisot's characteristically loose, sketchy brushwork with layers of blue and pink visible beneath the surface of paint. The composition, posed using hired models rather than family members, reflects Morisot's lifelong artistic preoccupation with the domestic world of women and children in bourgeois French society. Born in 1841 in Bourges, France, Morisot was a central figure of the Impressionist movement—one of the few women to exhibit at the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874—and was celebrated by critic Gustave Geffroy as one of the three great ladies of Impressionism. Painted in the final year of her life, this work exemplifies her mature style: sinuous, expressive brushstrokes, visible canvas texture at the edges, and a virtuosic command of color to evoke mood and spatial depth.