The Artist's Sister at a Window

The Artist Sister at a Window, painted in 1869, depicts Edma Morisot - Berthe Morisot older sister and fellow painter - seated at a window, her face turned toward the light. The painting is one of Morisot earliest mature works and a document of the close relationship between the two sisters, who both studied painting before Edma married and abandoned her artistic career. The painting belongs to the tradition of the woman-at-a-window, a subject with a long history in Western art that ranges from Dutch genre painting to Romanticism. Morisot treatment of the subject is distinctly modern: her sister is not a symbolic figure of longing or contemplation but a specific person, recently married, who may be looking at the world she has left behind. The painting most radical feature is its brushwork. Morisot renders the figure and the interior in a series of rapid, confident strokes that suggest rather than describe, creating an effect of spontaneity that was shocking to Salon audiences but exhilarating to the nascent Impressionist group. This brushwork - free, rapid, and seemingly effortless - would become Morisot signature and the quality that most distinguished her from her male colleagues.

Morisot early portraits of her sister document the most intimate dimension of the Impressionist project and raise the question of why Edma Morisot, who was as talented as Berthe, abandoned painting after her marriage - a question about the social conditions that shaped women artistic careers in the 19th century.

This painting captures the moment of decision that defined two lives: Edma, about to leave the world of art for the world of marriage, looks out a window; Berthe, painting her, chooses the opposite path. The window is both a view and a boundary - the line between the life of the painter and the life of the wife.