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Woman at her Toilette is an oil on canvas painting by French artist Berthe Morisot, executed between 1875 and 1880. It was first exhibited at the fifth Impressionist exhibition in 1880 and is now in the Art Institute of Chicago. When first shown, the work was displayed alongside other Impressionist works by Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro. Morisot's Woman at Her Toilette is also referred to by the name Lady at her Toilet. The work is one of several paintings that Morisot completed on the theme of women getting dressed, applying makeup, and arranging their hair.

Context

Woman at her Toilette, along with the other paintings in Morisot's women bathroom scenes collection, convey what Morisot viewed in her everyday life as she was a women in the bourgeoisie. In 1869, Morisot altered the primary subject of her works to capturing bourgeois women in their everyday activities. This subject matter was prominent for Impressionism, with many Impressionist artists focusing on the mundane tasks of higher-society members for their pieces. Morisot has seven toilette scene paintings, and each one illustrates women in combination with the boundaries and availability of sight. Whether this be through the inclusion of a mirror, a window, or other aspects of vision, the combination highlight the rituals the women in the composition were engaged with. The bathroom scenes displayed a woman's most vulnerable self, where one could "produce her self-image" and engage in a private ritual. Models were hired for these bathroom pieces, and many of them, like the woman in Woman at her Toilette, do not acknowledge or see the viewer, emphasizing this aspect of privacy. As she was restricted to where she was allowed to paint due to her gender, Morisot relied on many of her female friends to be her models.

Although many of Morisot's pieces, like Woman at her Toilette, focus on women in bourgeois, Morisot's profession in combination with her social class proved difficult to be seen as inappropriate as her credibility was often doubted with the thought that her art was unconventional. As Morisot was both a wife and mother, and differed from other female artists like Mary Cassatt and Rosa Bonjeur, her career path oftentimes faced criticism and disapproval from fellow citizens. Critic Théodore Duret claimed that her gender and social class both contributed to a diminished reputation for Morisot.

Description

Morisot's Woman at her Toilette illustrates a woman in her bathroom, faced away from the viewer, and in the midst of getting ready or unready in front of the mirror. The piece contains a silvery-gray and white palette with subtle hints of blue. Aspects of Rococo style are seen in this piece alongside her other pieces of hers dated back to the early 1870s. Woman at her Toilette encapsulates the "parisienne": a "stylish, urban woman who came to symbolize modernity in France's capital." Facets of Rococo are seen in Morisot's work through the pastel and dreamlike palette, loose brushwork, blurred edges, and feminine qualities. The emphasis on color instead of structure was seen as a feminine quality in works, and Morisot utilized sketches by Jean-Honoré Fragonard to embody characteristics of the Rococo style. The loose brushwork and sketchiness of the piece Kathleen Adler argues may be due to Morisot's freedom of having a stable career where she did not have to rely on solely dealers to sell her work, making it so she could branch out more in style.

Analysis

With the inclusion of vision through both the viewer's gaze and the woman in the composition not acknowledging the audience, much discourse has been presented for the meaning behind Woman at her toilette. Anne Higonnet asserts how the bathroom setting convey a moment of creativity for women and is an invitation for viewers to come in and view this vulnerable scene. She explains how Morisot examined how women's bodies were objectified in society, and instead of fueling this gender dynamic , she "turned eroticism into an empty spectacle by refusing to provide the sexual content a viewer would expect." Although it seems Morisot is allowing a masculine desire into her pieces, all women in the bathroom scenes are preoccupied with themselves, and instead "turn us away" from them. Some might believe Morisot's piece to be entirely erotic, yet Higonnet exclaims that the pieces "contain as many denials of a sexually possessive gaze as solicitations." In addition, the many elements of vision make viewers think about how women are perceived in society and how these women see and alter themselves for the public eye.

The art historians Kathleen Adler and Tamar Garb argue that the painting is "in keeping with contemporary constructions of womanhood" because the toilette was where women transformed themselves into "appealing objects of male delectation." Due to Morisot having been a bourgeois woman, and having captured subject matter related to so, it reflected the "often stereotypical constructions of femininity of her time."

Other art historians, like Cindy Kang, provide information that even though many of Morisot's feminine images convey aspects of sensuality, art critics at the time did not perceive her artwork to be erotic. Just as much as these toilette scenes could emit eroticism through "the contours of the lithe bodies and passages of exposed skin," these attitudes are dissuaded through Morisot's "gestural brushstrokes," placing a greater emphasis towards the psychological state of her subjects. With this, Morisot introduced a "feminine vision" where she could "complicate or disrupt the traditional narratives of femininity that began in the rococo period" and continued throughout the time.

Critics

Famous critic Camille Mauclair detailed how Impressionism was a more "feminine art" that had a main protagonist being Berthe Morisot. Morisot's most critically successful pieces were The Mirror (La Psyché), Head of a Girl (Woman with a Fan) and Woman at her Toilette. With her toilette scenes, Joris-Karl Huys mans (under pen name Jaqcues), wrote that Morisot was "the chronicler of the boudoir." The silvery-blue palette seen in Woman at her Toilette and other works by Morisot many claimed demonstrated her technique in painting natural light. Furthermore, Paul Mantz perceived that Jeane-Antoine Watteu would see in Morisot's style for Woman at her Toilette a "vague music" that resembled an "art which barely seems to exist."

Kang explains that while Éduoard Manet and Edgar Degas painted bathing scenes that were "immediately associated in the press with women of easy virtue and prostitution, the women in Morisot's boudoir paintings, such as Getting Up, The Mirror, and Woman at her Toilette, were viewed as "charming," "virginal," "chaste," and exuding a "fashionable elegance.""

Distribution

Art collector Ernest Hoschedé bought Woman at her Toilette in January of 1876 from one of Morisot's dealers, Paul Durand-Ruel. Hoshedé was a patron of both Manet and Morisot, and alongside Morisot's Woman at her Toilette also purchased her Young Woman with a Mirror or Interior. In June of 1878, Mary Cassatt bought Woman at her Toilette from Hoschedé's collection for 95 francs.