/art-calendar

Date

1875–80

Origin

France

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

60.3 × 80.4 cm (23 3/4 × 31 5/8 in.); Framed: 85.8 × 105.5 × 10.5 cm (33 3/4 × 41 1/2 × 4 1/8 in.)

Credit

Stickney Fund

Rendered with feathery brushstrokes in shades of lavender, pink, blue, white, and gray, this Impressionist painting captures a subject often explored by male artists of the day but seldom broached by the period's few women artists. Morisot presents a decidely female perspective, intimate yet not eroticized. She signed her name along the bottom of the mirror, as if to suggest that the image in her painting is as ephemeral as a silvery reflection.