Winter
Berthe Morisot·1880
Historical Context
Painted in 1880 and now in the Dallas Museum of Art, this canvas representing winter belongs to a series of seasonal subjects Morisot explored during her career. Winter in Paris and its suburbs offered the particular quality of pale, diffuse light, bare trees, and the social retreat indoors that she depicted with the same attentiveness she brought to summer's brightness. The Dallas museum's French Impressionist collection is among the American Southwest's strongest.
Technical Analysis
The winter palette is appropriately muted — silvery greys, pale blues, and the warm ochres of bare earth and stone — applied with Morisot's characteristic varied touch. The absence of foliage opens up the composition's spatial structure, the bare branches against the winter sky providing linear elements within the otherwise soft tonal handling.
