The Artist's Sister at a Window

Painted in 1869 and now in the National Gallery of Art, this early canvas shows Morisot's sister Edma at a window, looking outward toward an unseen view. The window as a compositional motif — woman poised between interior and exterior, between private and public worlds — carries significant symbolic weight in 19th-century painting of female subjects. Morisot's treatment is direct and unsentimental, the figure absorbed in her own thoughts rather than performing for the viewer. This early work already shows the psychological directness that would define her mature practice.

The strong backlight from the window creates a compositional tension between the interior's warm tones and the cool brightness beyond. Morisot renders Edma's figure with relatively controlled strokes at this early stage of her career, the dress and chair carefully described. The window itself is treated as pure light, details dissolved.