The Cradle
Morisot’s sister watches over her sleeping daughter. Morisot took part in the Impressionists’ first exhibition in 1874 and often depicted women’s everyday life indoors.
The sheer veil over the cradle is painted with light, white strokes.
Berthe Morisot came from a well-to-do Parisian family. She and her sister Edma studied painting together, including under the landscape painter Camille Corot. Edma gave up painting when she married in 1869, while Berthe carried on. The Cradle was painted in 1872 and shows Edma with her newborn daughter Blanche. The sisters were very close, and their letters to each other have survived.
Edma sits beside the cradle, looking down at the child. One hand is at her chin and the other on the cradle’s veil. The baby sleeps beneath a thin white veil drawn over the cradle. Behind Edma hangs a sheer curtain. The composition is calm, and the light is soft and even. Her gaze is fixed on the child with a mixture of tenderness and gravity.
The picture is built around a diagonal: from Edma’s head, along her arm, to the veil over the cradle. It links mother and child. The veil and the curtain form light, airy areas. Morisot painted them with light, white brushstrokes that give the fabric its transparency. Pink ribbons and details add colour to the pale tonality. The palette is light and restricted, with white, pink and the dark blue of Edma’s dress.
The Cradle was shown at the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874. Morisot was the only woman among the participating artists. She went on to exhibit in almost all of the group’s exhibitions. That same year she married Eugène Manet, brother of the painter Édouard Manet, with whom she was in close contact. The exhibition was organised by the artists themselves, without support from the state.
Morisot often depicted women’s everyday lives, homes and children. These were the settings she had access to as a woman in bourgeois Paris; women could not move freely in cafés and public places in the same way. The Cradle has been read as an image of motherhood, but also as a reflection on the different choices the two sisters made. The latter reading, however, is a retrospective one. Morisot often painted those closest to her, and her daughter Julie later became a recurring subject.
The painting remained in the family for many years. The Louvre bought it in 1930, and since 1986 it has hung in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. It is among Morisot’s best-known pictures. It is a fairly small work, just over fifty centimetres high.
For a long time Morisot was overshadowed by her male colleagues. In recent decades her standing has changed, and she has been the subject of major solo exhibitions. Today she is regarded as one of the central figures of Impressionism, and The Cradle is one of the movement’s most famous images of everyday life.