Berthe Morisot’s Young Woman with a Straw Hat (1884) is an oil-on-canvas work that exemplifies the artist’s mature Impressionist style, marked by rapid, feathery brushstrokes and a luminous pastel palette. Painted at the height of her career, the work captures a fleeting, informal moment of feminine repose, a subject central to Morisot’s oeuvre. The painting is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[3]
Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (14 January 1841 – 2 March 1895) was a French painter and printmaker, born in Bourges into an affluent bourgeois family.[1] She was a core member of the circle of Parisian artists who became known as the Impressionists. After exhibiting at the Paris Salon in 1864 — listed as a student of Joseph Guichard and Achille-François Oudinot — she showed work in six subsequent Salons before joining the "rejected" Impressionists in their first independent exhibition in 1874, held at the studio of the photographer Nadar alongside Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley.[1] Morisot participated in all but one of the eight Impressionist exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886.[1] In 1894, art critic Gustave Geffroy described her as one of Les trois grandes dames ("The three great ladies") of Impressionism, alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.[1] Morisot was married to Eugène Manet, brother of her friend and colleague Édouard Manet.[1]
The painting, dated 1884, is part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[3] The museum’s open data records the work as an oil on canvas by Morisot.[3] No further provenance chain is documented in the available sources.
Young Woman with a Straw Hat is executed in oil on canvas, the medium most associated with the Impressionists’ plein-air experiments.[3] The work dates to 1884, a period when Morisot had fully absorbed the loose, abbreviated brushwork characteristic of the movement.[1][3] The painting’s technique reflects the artist’s interest in capturing the effects of light and atmosphere rather than precise descriptive detail, consistent with the broader Impressionist project of recording fleeting sensory impressions.[1]
The subject of a young woman wearing a straw hat is a recurring motif in Morisot’s work and in Impressionist imagery more broadly. The hat, a fashionable accessory of the period, situates the sitter within the context of modern Parisian life, a theme central to the Impressionists’ engagement with contemporary subjects.[1] Morisot’s focus on the female figure in informal, domestic or outdoor settings reflects her sustained interest in the everyday experiences of women in late 19th-century France.[1]
The National Gallery of Art houses Young Woman with a Straw Hat as part of its permanent collection.[3] The museum’s holdings include significant works of Impressionism, and the painting is catalogued under the artist’s name with the date 1884.[3]
The painting is dated 1884 according to the National Gallery of Art’s catalogue record.[3]
The work is executed in oil on canvas.[3]
The painting is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[3]
Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (French: [bɛʁt mɔʁizo]; 14 January 1841 – 2 March 1895) was a French painter, printmaker and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. In 1864, Morisot exhibited for the
French painter, 1841-1895
National Gallery of Art open data: Berthe Morisot; 1884; oil on canvas
Louie Drehmer, Curator, ArtWiki
Louie curates ArtWiki, cross-referencing every entry against museum records, Wikidata, the Getty Union List of Artist Names, and Wikipedia.
Young Woman is an oil painting by Berthe Morisot, 1871, held at National Gallery of Art.
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