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Woman and Child in a meadow at Bougival
Art critic Gustave Geffroy said 'no one represents Impressionism with more refined talent or with more authority than Morisot' (1881). In her day she was at the core of the pioneering Impressionist movement. But since then her contribution has largely been overlooked.As an upper middle-class woman, Morisot did not enjoy the freedom and mobility of male artists. She had limited access to the fashionable cafés, bars and public spaces that feature in Impressionist works - her work was mostly restricted to the domestic. But she successfully combined a professional identity as a cutting edge artist, with her personal identity as mother and wife within a bourgeois home. This scene was painted en plein air in a garden at Bougival, a leafy village west of Paris, where the artist spent several summers in the 1880s. It probably shows her daughter, Julie, handing a flower to her nanny, Paisie. The figures blend in to the wild garden and long grass around them. Morisot married Eugène Manet, the brother of artist Edouard Manet, in 1874. At first influenced by Manet, she soon developed her own style, and the two shared a close friendship and mutual admiration for each other’s work.
Work was part of the AFA tour (2009-2010): From Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales