Young Woman Knitting
ca. 1883
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
19 3/4 x 23 5/8 in. (50.2 x 60 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967
Accession Number
67.187.89
Tags
Art Historical Context
Berthe Morisot’s *Young Woman Knitting* (ca. 1883) captures a quiet moment of domestic life with the gentle sensitivity that defined her work as a leading Impressionist. One of the few women admitted to the circle of artists who exhibited together in the 1870s and 1880s, Morisot frequently turned her attention to women engaged in everyday activities, presenting them with dignity and intimacy rather than sentimentality. Here, the young woman’s absorbed concentration on her knitting becomes a subject worthy of fine art, reflecting the Impressionists’ interest in modern life and ordinary experien...
About the Artist
Berthe Morisot · 1841–1895
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was a founding member of the Impressionist movement and one of the most significant women artists of the 19th century. Born into an affluent bourgeois family in Bourges, France—her mother was a great-niece of the Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard—Morisot received serious artistic training despite the social constraints facing women of her class. Under the guidance of...