In this, perhaps her most famous painting, Berthe Morisot captures two apparently middle-class ladies in a moment of quiet thought. (The women have not been identified and probably are models who posed for Morisot.) They float lazily in a boat on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne, a large, wooded park on the edge of Paris. Morisot painted them as if she were sitting next to them, and well she might since the fashion- able Bois was not far from her home. It was con- sidered safe and accept- able for a woman of Morisot’s social class to stroll, picnic, and even paint here. Unlike her male counterparts who could set up an easel in city streets and café-concerts, Morisot stayed close to home and painted real-life moments from her immediate world - elegant women getting out of bed, relaxing in the garden, or dressing in their boudoir for a night at the opera.

Intrigued by the play of light on her subjects, Morisot painted the swans, the reflections in the lake, and the ladies themselves in the quick, zigzag brushstrokes for which she’s known. In typical Impressionist style, the composition is off center, with the blue-coated woman partially cropped by the edge of the scene. Yet notice how similar brush- strokes throughout the painting pull it together. This sketchy texture captures Morisot’s open-air "impression" of the moment, though art critics of the time often mistook her loose style for sloppiness. "Why, with her talent, does she not take the trouble to finish?" complained one early reviewer. But other critics raved about Morisot’s pearly, soft color harmonies. "She grinds flower petals onto her palette," gushed one writer, "so as to spread them later on her canvas...."

Berthe Morisot struggled to be taken as seriously as male counterparts of the time. Reared in a conservative, cultured family, she received the art lessons given all young ladies of her class. She was excluded, as a woman, from nude life-drawing classes, but her ability emerged in paintings of the outdoors and domestic scenes. She married the brother of her mentor, Èdouard Manet, and exhibited in all but one Impressionist show. During her lifetime, Morisot’s canvases often fetched slightly higher prices than those of her male colleagues, but she remained modest. She had merely wanted to capture "something of what goes by...the smallest thing," she wrote in later life. "An attitude of Julie’s (her daughter), a smile, a flower, a fruit, the branch of a tree, any of these things alone would be enough for me."

Ask the students to count the different blues they see in this reproduction of Morisot’s painting. How many greens and yellows are there? Are any other color groups represented? If you were designing a set of crayons for the colors in this painting, how many would be in the box? What would you name some of the colors? Just for fun, see if you can give them all science-type names, like Sulfur Yellow!

Language Arts

The two women appear to be enjoying a relaxed, sunny day. Have your students write a dialogue between the two women in the boat. First, create a one-line description of the characters. Next, create a dialogue between them. Perform the play for the rest of the class. You may want to include the artist as another character in your play.