Lot Essay
Between 1881 and 1884, Morisot and her family spent the summers at a country house in Bougival, a resort spot on the Seine where Monet, Renoir and Pissarro had all painted before the Franco-Prussian War. In Bougival, Morisot began a series of outdoor portraits, painting her family, her friends and her neighbors -- most often, her daughter Julie -- in the lush grounds around her home. In Dame à l'ombrelle, painted in Bougival in 1881, Morisot renders a young woman whom Bataille and Wildenstein identify simply as "Milly." Strikingly similar both in subject matter and in execution to such a prominent painting from the Bougival series as Le Jarden, 1883 (Bataille and Wildenstein, no. 142), the present work was certainly produced during Morisot's first summer at the country house.
With their complex treatment of color and space, the Bougival pictures mark a definitive turning point in Morisot's artistic development. As Charles Stuckey asserts, "...it is clear that without relinquishing her free brushwork, Morisot had already begun by 1881 to formulate [a] more sophisticated approach...the unedited appearance of the setting in Morisot's painting and the seeming spontaneity of the brushwork notwithstanding, the artist calculated every nuance." (exh. cat., Berthe Morisot, Impressionist, College Art Museum, Mount Holyoke, 1987, pp. 94-95)
For example, Morisot uses color in the Bougival series not merely to achieve descriptive and decorative aims but also to create a sense of spatial ambiguity, one of the hallmarks of her later work. "These Bougival pictures," Stuckey explains, "are characterized both by the calculated interplay of opposing complimentary tones that resonate and thus heighten the illusion of space and by the contrasting interplay of closely related tones with just the opposite effect." (Ibid., p. 94)
In the present picture, Morisot subtly blurs the distinction between the foreground, midground and the background by juxtaposing several patches of a single beige tone (used to render Milly's face, her umbrella, and the region to her right). However, she also chooses to include such dramatically contrasing elements as the deep blue of Milly's hat and the vibrant green of the foliage behind her, placing the various planes of the picture in sharp relief. The tug-of-war between flatness and depth which results from this intentionally bifurcated approach to color transforms Dame à l'ombrelle into what T.J. Edelstein calls a "visualization of ambivalence." (T.J. Edelstein, Perspectives on Morisot, New York, 1990, p. 33)
Discussing another painting from the Bougival series, Edelstein elaborates:
...the heavy impasto and brilliant color of the background create a spatial conflation with the foreground. Yet the suggestion of the isolation, of the encapsulation of the figure in the foreground remains dominant...the strong horizontals and verticals lock [her] into [her] own space. Equivocation might almost be said to be the subject of many of Morisot's paintings.... (Ibid., p. 33)
However complex they may be, Morisot's scenes of domestic life form an easy contrast to the paintings of Paris's public realm -- its streets, its parks, its sidewalk cafés -- which her male contemporaries were executing. Prohibited because she was a woman from entering these quintessentially modern spaces unchaperoned, Morisot does not fit Baudelaire's celebrated model of the artist as flâneur, observing and recording the spectacle of newly modernized Paris, "...the fugitive, fleeting beauty of present-day life, the distinguishing character of that quality which...we have called 'modernity'." (C. Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life," The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, London, 1964, p. 40)
Nonetheless, the many contrasts and ambiguities which characterize Morisot's paintings make them undeniably effective as representations of the modern condition. Even the iconography of works like the Bougival paintings -- outdoor scenes intimate and enclosed enough to suggest interiors, scenes of leisure covered with the traces of the artist's hard work -- is not nearly so straightforward as it would seem. Discussing Morisot's art, critic Linda Nochlin notes:
...[Morisot's] strange, fluid, unclassifiable, and contradiction- laden imagery inscribes many of those characteristic features of modernism and modernity...above all, modernism's profoundly deconstructive project. Sweeping away 'all fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their...prejudices and opinions' -- this is certainly Morisot's project as well." (L. Nochlin, "Morisot's Wet Nurse: The Construction of Work and Leisure in Impressionist Painting," Women, Art and Power and Other Essays, New York, 1988, p. 54)
With their complex treatment of color and space, the Bougival pictures mark a definitive turning point in Morisot's artistic development. As Charles Stuckey asserts, "...it is clear that without relinquishing her free brushwork, Morisot had already begun by 1881 to formulate [a] more sophisticated approach...the unedited appearance of the setting in Morisot's painting and the seeming spontaneity of the brushwork notwithstanding, the artist calculated every nuance." (exh. cat., Berthe Morisot, Impressionist, College Art Museum, Mount Holyoke, 1987, pp. 94-95)
For example, Morisot uses color in the Bougival series not merely to achieve descriptive and decorative aims but also to create a sense of spatial ambiguity, one of the hallmarks of her later work. "These Bougival pictures," Stuckey explains, "are characterized both by the calculated interplay of opposing complimentary tones that resonate and thus heighten the illusion of space and by the contrasting interplay of closely related tones with just the opposite effect." (Ibid., p. 94)
In the present picture, Morisot subtly blurs the distinction between the foreground, midground and the background by juxtaposing several patches of a single beige tone (used to render Milly's face, her umbrella, and the region to her right). However, she also chooses to include such dramatically contrasing elements as the deep blue of Milly's hat and the vibrant green of the foliage behind her, placing the various planes of the picture in sharp relief. The tug-of-war between flatness and depth which results from this intentionally bifurcated approach to color transforms Dame à l'ombrelle into what T.J. Edelstein calls a "visualization of ambivalence." (T.J. Edelstein, Perspectives on Morisot, New York, 1990, p. 33)
Discussing another painting from the Bougival series, Edelstein elaborates:
...the heavy impasto and brilliant color of the background create a spatial conflation with the foreground. Yet the suggestion of the isolation, of the encapsulation of the figure in the foreground remains dominant...the strong horizontals and verticals lock [her] into [her] own space. Equivocation might almost be said to be the subject of many of Morisot's paintings.... (Ibid., p. 33)
However complex they may be, Morisot's scenes of domestic life form an easy contrast to the paintings of Paris's public realm -- its streets, its parks, its sidewalk cafés -- which her male contemporaries were executing. Prohibited because she was a woman from entering these quintessentially modern spaces unchaperoned, Morisot does not fit Baudelaire's celebrated model of the artist as flâneur, observing and recording the spectacle of newly modernized Paris, "...the fugitive, fleeting beauty of present-day life, the distinguishing character of that quality which...we have called 'modernity'." (C. Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life," The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, London, 1964, p. 40)
Nonetheless, the many contrasts and ambiguities which characterize Morisot's paintings make them undeniably effective as representations of the modern condition. Even the iconography of works like the Bougival paintings -- outdoor scenes intimate and enclosed enough to suggest interiors, scenes of leisure covered with the traces of the artist's hard work -- is not nearly so straightforward as it would seem. Discussing Morisot's art, critic Linda Nochlin notes:
...[Morisot's] strange, fluid, unclassifiable, and contradiction- laden imagery inscribes many of those characteristic features of modernism and modernity...above all, modernism's profoundly deconstructive project. Sweeping away 'all fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their...prejudices and opinions' -- this is certainly Morisot's project as well." (L. Nochlin, "Morisot's Wet Nurse: The Construction of Work and Leisure in Impressionist Painting," Women, Art and Power and Other Essays, New York, 1988, p. 54)