Woman at Her Toilette

Berthe Morisot · 1875–80

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

60.3 × 80.4 cm (23 3/4 × 31 5/8 in.); Framed: 85.8 × 105.5 × 10.5 cm (33 3/4 × 41 1/2 × 4 1/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Woman at Her Toilette is one of Berthe Morisot's most quietly intimate works — a shimmering study of a woman's private world rendered in the soft, dissolving light that defined her vision of modern femininity. Morisot was a central figure of the Impressionist movement, exhibiting in seven of its eight landmark shows, and she brought something to the group that her male contemporaries rarely accessed: an insider's perspective on domestic and private feminine experience. In this canvas, her brushwork is at its most characteristic — loose, almost notational strokes that suggest fabric, skin, and reflected light without ever overstating them. The result feels less like a posed subject and more like a moment genuinely observed, full of warmth and restraint in equal measure. Morisot trained under Corot and later came under the influence of Édouard Manet, whose brother Eugène she married in 1874 — situating her at the very heart of the Impressionist circle during its most fertile years. This hand-painted oil reproduction faithfully translates Morisot's delicate handling of tone and texture onto canvas, preserving the luminous fragility that makes the original so affecting — a painting that rewards close looking and lives well on a wall.