Dans la salle à manger

Morisot showed this in the spring of 1886, at the eighth and last of the Impressionist exhibitions. The group was breaking up, and this was the final time they hung together. Her subject is a young servant, caught for a moment in the dining room with a little dog at her feet and a cabinet of china behind her. What's unusual is the respect. Instead of treating a maid as background, Morisot gives her the ease and direct, friendly gaze a portraitist would save for the mistress of the house. She paints fast and loose, the whole room brushed in flickering strokes that barely settle. The girl meets your eye as if you had just walked in on her.