Femme et enfant sur un balcon

Morisot painted this around 1872, in a Paris just out of a hard year. The city had been besieged during the war with Prussia and then torn by the fighting of the Commune in 1871, and with all that just behind them, a well-dressed woman and a small girl stand at a balcony rail on the heights of Passy, looking over the rooftops. Much of the view is hidden by the low wall, but on the horizon the golden dome of the Invalides rises through the city haze. Morisot renders the figures and the distance in loose, light touches, the black of the woman's dress the one firm note. She was among the few women at the heart of the new Impressionist circle, and she showed with them at their first group exhibition two years later.