Berthe Morisot - Reading with Green Umbrella 1873
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Reading with Green Umbrella 1873
46x71cm oil/canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, United States
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From Cleveland Museum of Art:
The fashionable woman seated in the foreground is the artist's sister, Edma. However, the painting is not a portrait. Morisot's principal concern was to render a figure in a natural, outdoor environment. Edma's white dress-the prime vehicle for Morisot's study of reflected light-is saturated with delicate lavender, blue, yellow, and rose tonalitites. Deftly executed with quick brushstrokes, the painting resounds with a feeling of freshness, vibrancy and delicate charm. "Every day I pray that the Good Lord will make me like a child," Morisot wrote, "That is to say, that He will make me see nature and render it the way a child would, without preconceptions."
Morisot, the great granddaughter of the 18th-century French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, selected this painting as one of her four works shown in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874.