The Cradle

1872

Oil on canvas, 56 × 46.5 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Morisot's sister Edma watches her sleeping daughter Blanche through a veil of white gauze. It is Morisot's first mother-and-child picture and was shown in 1874.

Morisot gives a quiet moment between mother and child at home a place in a public exhibition. Everyday private life became a serious Impressionist subject.
With it, Morisot became the first woman to exhibit with the group.
One slanting line runs from the curtain through Edma's lowered eyes and arm to the child.
Edma draws the veil across the cradle, screening the child from the viewer.
Morisot failed to sell it; the Louvre bought it from the family in 1930.

Middle-class home life, with mothers, sisters and children, was the world Morisot knew best. Motherhood, introduced here, became one of her lasting themes.

Image: Google Art Project · Public domain