Young Woman Watering a Shrub

In 1876 the Impressionists held their second group show, and most Paris critics still treated it as a joke. Berthe Morisot was the only woman exhibiting with them, and she painted what was within reach, the family's own terrace in the sixteenth arrondissement. The woman bent over the plants is her sister Edma, seen from behind, as if caught mid-task and unaware. Morisot had a practical reason for the pose too. That plain white housedress let her chase the way daylight breaks over white fabric, one of the problems the Impressionists kept returning to. Edma had trained as a painter alongside Berthe, then set it aside when she married.