Under the Orange Tree

Berthe Morisot was probably the greatest female artist in the Impressionist movement and showed in all but one of the Impressionist exhibitions. This painting represents her daughter Julie, who became her favorite subject in the last two decades of her life. Julie appears in the garden of Morisot's winter home near Nice in the south of France. The setting is an exotic one with overarching orange trees and Julie's pet green parrot in a birdcage to the left. As a well-off bourgeois woman (and therefore subject to rules of suitable public behavior), Morisot was unable to travel around Paris without an escort and, as a result, focused largely on domestic scenes.

Morisot’s works are almost always small in scale. She worked in oil paint, watercolors, or pastel, and sketched using various drawing media. Her contemporary art critics such as Gustave Geffroy in 1881, lauded her with praise: "No one represents Impressionism with more refined talent or more authority than Morisot."

If you want to know more about female Impressionists–read our article on DailyArt Magazine!