In the Garden

In the Garden, painted in 1885 at one of the suburban gardens where Morisot spent her summers, continues the sustained exploration of domestic outdoor space that defines her mature Impressionist practice. Morisot was the most prominent woman among the Impressionists, exhibiting in seven of the eight group shows, and her garden scenes represent both the limits of what bourgeois women could observe and paint — confined to private rather than public space — and an extraordinary formal achievement within those limits. The barely contained brushwork and the dissolving of form in outdoor light represent Morisot at her most technically adventurous, pushing the Impressionist approach to observation further than most of her contemporaries.

Morisot's brushwork is among the most daring in Impressionism — rapid, scumbled strokes that seem barely to adhere to the canvas, creating a sense of ambient light and spontaneous observation. Her palette is high-keyed and delicate, favoring pale blues, whites, and soft greens that capture the diffuse light of a summer garden, with figures dissolving into their surroundings in a formal integration distinctive to her personal vision.