A Menina de Nice

Berthe Morisot was one of the very few women at the center of the Impressionist circle, showing her work with Monet and Degas as an equal at a time when the official art schools were still closed to women. She painted this in 1889 during one of her stays in the south of France, in the hills behind Nice. The sitter is a local girl, sometimes called Celestine, in a blue blouse with a single rose tucked into it, set against pale mountains that melt into a blue horizon. Look at how Morisot finishes the face and hands carefully but leaves the clothes as quick, open brushwork, barely more than a sketch. That deliberate unevenness was exactly the loose handling critics had spent years mocking the Impressionists for.