White Flowers in a Bowl

Painted in 1885 and now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this still life of white flowers in a ceramic bowl belongs to a strand of Morisot's practice that has sometimes been overshadowed by her figure and garden works. Still lifes of flowers appear throughout her career, often as exercises in pure color and paint handling. White flowers — roses, peonies, anemones — were particular favorites, offering subtle challenges of tonal differentiation within a narrow chromatic range.

The white blooms are painted with exquisite tonal variation — cool whites, warm creams, soft grey shadows — that gives the flowers three-dimensionality and life without harsh modeling. The bowl and tabletop are rendered with economy, the background barely inflected to give the flowers maximum luminous presence.