Young Woman Knitting

Berthe Morisot

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this luminous outdoor scene, a young woman is depicted absorbed in knitting within what appears to be a garden setting, her facial features nearly dissolved by Morisot's characteristically loose, rapid brushwork. Scholars have noted that with this painting, Morisot pushed her Impressionist technique toward the edge of abstraction, making the study of light—rather than the identity of the sitter—the work's true subject. Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) was a French painter and a central figure of the Impressionist movement, participating in nearly all of its eight independent exhibitions between 1874 and 1886; she was renowned for her flickering brushstrokes and light palette applied to intimate scenes of modern bourgeois life. The painting exemplifies Morisot's recurring interest in women engaged in domestic pastimes such as knitting and sewing, subjects that reflected both the social world she inhabited and the boundaries placed on female artists of her era.