Woman with the Oriental Vase 1872

Editor: We are looking at "Woman with the Oriental Vase," painted by Edgar Degas in 1872. It's an oil painting currently residing at the Musée d'Orsay. I’m immediately struck by the contrast between the woman's somewhat melancholic expression and the vibrant colours of the vase and flowers. What do you see in this piece? Curator: I'm drawn to the symbolic weight of the vase itself. Think of it as a vessel – not just for flowers, but for cultural memory. Oriental objects were highly fashionable in Paris at this time, but their acquisition also spoke to French colonial ambitions and exotic fantasies. Notice how the woman avoids our gaze, almost as if burdened by the object's complex history. Does the vase itself appear ‘French’ to you? Editor: Not particularly. It looks almost… Grecian, maybe? Certainly not like the typical vases you'd see in Parisian still lifes from that time. The placement seems significant, too. Almost as if it's a barrier. Curator: Precisely. It acts as a barrier between the woman and the viewer, but also between the viewer and a whole network of cultural references. This exotic object invades a Western interior, reflecting perhaps not just colonial power, but the unsettling feeling of the world entering domestic space. And the rings? Do they reinforce or detract from the implied wealth suggested by the imported vase? Editor: They complicate it, definitely. The discarded jewelry could be seen as a casual detail, or perhaps a comment on the superficiality of wealth and status. I also noticed that the reflection of the red blooms in the blue vase create a violent visual conflict! Curator: An apt observation. Perhaps it mirrors a tension, then, between tradition and change. The vase might seem like a beautiful addition to the home, but on further inspection it symbolizes change and disruption. What was seemingly just an arrangement of colour reveals to be quite fraught upon consideration! Editor: I hadn't considered all the layers beneath the surface. I’ll definitely look at Impressionist paintings differently now!