The Bath 1885 - 1886

Berthe Morisot painted this scene of a young woman at her toilette using oil on canvas. Morisot’s chosen medium was hardly radical, but her handling of it certainly was. Look at the vigorous brushwork, seemingly applied in haste. You can feel the sweep of her arm as she captured the subject's intimate moment. The textures of the domestic space are evoked with a kind of shorthand. The painting feels unfinished, a sketch rather than a highly worked composition. Yet this apparent casualness was, of course, very carefully calibrated. Morisot was aligned with the Impressionists, who embraced the everyday world around them. This aesthetic aligned with the rise of industrial production in France. Painting was itself being industrialized, with ready-mixed colors available in tubes. In this context, Morisot's loose brushwork can be understood as a conscious aesthetic choice, celebrating the immediacy and spontaneity of the artist's hand. In doing so, she elevated the status of the artwork, setting it apart from the mass-produced objects of industrial capitalism.