Young Girl with an Apron

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was a founding member of the Impressionist group and one of its most consistent exhibitors, showing in seven of the eight Impressionist exhibitions. Young Girl with an Apron from 1891 is a late work, painted during the period when Morisot's brushwork had become increasingly free and her palette increasingly luminous. The young girl—probably a family member or household servant—is rendered with the rapid, sketch-like brushwork that characterizes Morisot's mature style, in which the figure dissolves into the surrounding atmosphere rather than standing apart from it.

Morisot's late paintings are among the most radical works in the Impressionist tradition because they push the dissolution of form into atmosphere further than any of her male colleagues dared. Young Girl with an Apron demonstrates this radical brushwork: the figure is barely differentiated from the background, the face is a few deft touches of paint, and the overall effect is of a fleeting impression rather than a studied portrait. Morisot's influence on the development of late Impressionism has been increasingly recognized as art historians have reassessed the contributions of women artists to the movement.

Young Girl with an Apron is late Morisot at her most radical: the figure dissolving into atmosphere, the face a few deft touches, the portrait becoming an Impressionist impression. The 1891 date places this in the period when Morisot's brushwork was freer than any of her male Impressionist colleagues—a reminder that Impressionism's most radical dissolution of form came from one of its least recognized members.