Young Woman with a Straw Hat

Painted in 1884 and now in the National Gallery of Art, this canvas shows a young woman in a fashionable straw hat — a summer accessory that appears repeatedly in Morisot's work as a sign of leisured femininity and outdoor pleasures. The hat's circular brim frames the face and provides a strong compositional element, while its material — woven straw — offered painterly challenges of texture and tone. Morisot's interest in hats as both social signifiers and pictorial opportunities gives her work a sustained engagement with contemporary fashion.

The straw hat's texture is suggested through varied warm yellows and ochres with light directional strokes that follow the weave. The woman's face and the surrounding setting are rendered with Morisot's characteristic lightness, the paint applied with visible confidence and a minimum of reworking.