Getting Up 1886

Curator: Berthe Morisot painted this tender scene, "Getting Up," in 1886. What strikes you about it? Editor: A quiet melancholy. It's so painterly it almost dissolves before your eyes. The loose brushstrokes create a dreamlike quality. Curator: Exactly! That ethereality is very intentional. It reflects her interest in capturing fleeting moments, much like her Impressionist contemporaries. The visible brushwork tells us something too. Editor: That it was constructed, not simply copied? These casual gestures of labor – her swift application, her deliberate blending of colors in some areas and a seeming impatience in others… the painting declares its own making. Is it oil paint? Curator: Yes, oil on canvas. The way she’s handled the light – particularly the shimmering whites of her nightgown and the bedsheets – it's quite magical, almost as if she is just emerging from shadows, reborn perhaps, ready for what the day will bring, but ever so delicate... Editor: It also says something about access and class, doesn’t it? Paint in tubes, readily available canvas. The pre-mixed paints meant faster production, a challenge to academic techniques of careful preparation with workshop assistants. More and more women found a way to sell these intimist subjects. Curator: Morisot occupied a unique position; both artist and socialite, able to observe and capture these moments of quiet domesticity. And she does it without a trace of the saccharine, wouldn’t you agree? It's pure observation, the essence of a moment captured on canvas. Editor: Absolutely. And she does so economically. Nothing is labored; everything flows into everything else. It makes me wonder about the role of women like her, turning what had long been dismissed as "minor" or "decorative" arts – pastels, watercolors – into serious statements about female experience. Curator: I hadn't thought of it that way, the merging of material and subject. She truly elevated these scenes into profound meditations on womanhood and modern life, imbuing them with a timeless quality despite their seeming ephemerality. What do you make of that? Editor: It’s beautiful how the painting gives so much space to those traditionally ‘female’ environments like the boudoir and turns what was unseen into what can be examined… And that examination leads, if one lets it, into much more complex issues, such as the gendering of the arts. Thank you! Curator: A fresh perspective, as always. A pleasure to look anew, and discuss.