Reading

Painted in 1888 and now in the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, this canvas shows a woman reading — a subject Morisot treated several times across her career as a vehicle for depicting absorbed feminine interiority. The reading woman withdraws from social performance into private intellectual engagement, a state of mind Morisot found compelling and treated with consistent dignity. By 1888 her handling was at its most fluid and assured, the figure given presence without labored description.

The reader's downward gaze and the book's pages create a gentle focal point within a loosely handled surrounding space. Morisot uses a warm, softly lit palette appropriate to an interior subject, the figure's clothing and the background rendered with varied but harmonious strokes that suggest a comfortable, private domestic atmosphere.