Young Girls at the Window

Two girls sit at an opening onto a garden in Berthe Morisot’s Young Girls at the Window. One turns in profile towards her companion; the other faces the viewer, her pale dress spreading across the lower right of the canvas. Between and behind them, twisting branches and blue-green foliage fill the view. A cat, seen from behind at their feet, gives the scene another quiet observer. Painted in 1892, the picture was identified in the 1961 catalogue as a portrait of the Bodeau girls at Mesnil.^[1] Their shared setting holds together a double portrait, a garden view and an experiment in how figures occupy the boundary between indoors and outdoors.

Two poses within one opening

The girls share the lower half of the picture, but Morisot gives each a different relationship to the viewer. The figure on the left sits sideways, with her head lowered slightly and her face turned to the right. Her greenish blue dress widens over her knees, with a warm reddish border following its lower edge. One dark shoe reaches towards the bottom of the canvas. The girl on the right is more frontal. Her long hair falls over her shoulders, a dark sash interrupts the light dress, and her hands gather low in front of her.

These differences make the pairing lively without requiring a conspicuous action. The left-hand figure directs attention across the canvas; the right-hand figure returns it towards us. Their heads sit at different heights, and their skirts create unequal masses of colour. The pale dress occupies much more space than the two faces together. Its broad, curving shape brings weight to the foreground, balancing the dense foliage above. Morisot lets the children's clothes carry a substantial part of the composition.

The space between them is just as carefully used. Small white and red flower-like touches gather near the centre, above the sweep of the left girl's skirt. Below, the cat sits within the gap between their feet. Its dark back and raised head pull the eye down towards the floor, while its position faces us back into the painting. The animal gives the foreground a point of orientation: we look over it towards the children, much as it appears to look towards them.

Neither girl is shown speaking or carrying out a clearly defined task. The title names their situation rather than an event. We might imagine a pause in conversation or a moment of waiting, but the painting keeps those possibilities open. Its most definite relationship is visual: two bodies arranged within a tall opening, with their different directions of looking preventing the scene from settling into a symmetrical portrait.

A garden that seems to enter the room

The window is easiest to recognise along the right edge, where pale green uprights and a horizontal division give the composition an architectural framework. Behind the girls, however, the vegetation has much greater freedom. Branches twist across the upper half of the canvas, and patches of blue appear among the leaves. A lighter passage leads back between the trunks, suggesting depth without establishing a distant horizon. The garden is close enough to become the girls’ immediate surround.

Morisot repeats its colours inside their clothes. Greens and blues pass through the shadows of the pale dress, while the darker garment on the left approaches the surrounding foliage in tone. Reddish accents in the hair, faces and dress border keep the figures distinct. The architecture establishes an opening, but colour softens the separation it might otherwise impose. The setting feels continuous across the boundary.

This is a recurring interest in Morisot’s work. The Musée d’Orsay’s 2019 exhibition essay describes windows, balconies, verandas and conservatories as places where interior and exterior can merge. Such settings also provide filtered natural light and opportunities to frame one view within another. The museum acknowledges the social restrictions surrounding women’s access to public space while emphasising the pictorial possibilities Morisot found in these intermediate places.^[10] In Young Girls at the Window, the closeness of the foliage makes that reading especially useful: the garden becomes part of the portrait’s structure.

The two girls also complicate the usual expectation of a window picture. They are not absorbed together in looking out at a distant prospect. One looks across the foreground and the other towards us. The opening offers a view, yet the people within it redirect our attention. We move between their faces, clothing and the branching forms behind them, continually crossing the same boundary that the window marks.

The Bodeau girls and the Mesnil setting

Bataille and Wildenstein describe the picture as painted at Mesnil after the little Bodeau girls. Their wording identifies the sitters collectively. It does not assign an individual name to the left or right figure. On the same page, the catalogue names Jeanne Bodeau as the model for Little Girl at Mesnil and Emma Bodeau for a separate picture of a girl seated in the grass.^[1] These neighbouring records place the double portrait among works involving local children, while leaving the precise identification of each face here open.

The place belongs to Morisot’s final years in the Seine valley. The Musée d’Orsay’s chronology records the rental of a house at Mézy, near Juziers, in 1890, and a stay at the château du Mesnil in 1892, following its purchase the previous year.^[10] The catalogue's location is therefore consistent with a documented working environment. The garden in this picture remains a selective painted view; its branches and patches of light do not provide a detailed plan of the property.

The same chronology records the death of Morisot’s husband, Eugène Manet, in 1892.^[10] That event matters to the history of the year, though it does not determine the meaning of the children’s expressions. Their stillness can feel thoughtful or reserved. The evidence does not turn them into figures of mourning. The picture gives us a particular arrangement of local models, light and vegetation, with room for a viewer's response to its atmosphere.

Looking between this double portrait and Little Girl at Mesnil brings out Morisot’s different approaches to a child’s presence. In the single portrait, the face fills a much tighter field of greenery. Here, the nearly full-length figures have an architectural setting, a relationship to each other and the cat below them. The broader scene permits the painter to distribute attention. A face can remain small and quietly stated while a dress or a branch takes on a larger visual role.

Long brushstrokes and related studies

The pale dress is an inviting place to follow Morisot’s brush. Long curved marks move down from the bodice and around the skirt. Cooler shadows run beside warmer pink and cream touches. At the hem, short, curling strokes suggest an ornamental edge without describing every fold. These changes of direction give the fabric movement even though the seated figure remains still. The skirt reads first as a broad light shape, then as many distinct touches of colour.

The garden has a different rhythm. Shorter, more broken marks gather into leaves and shadows, interrupted by the long curves of branches. Those curves echo the lines of hair and clothing below. Across the painting, Morisot joins distinct things through related movements of the brush. The Musée d’Orsay describes the long, fluid touch and saturated colour of her later work as a means of merging figures with their surroundings.^[10] Here, that relationship is visible without making the girls disappear into the garden: the dark sash, faces and shoes remain concentrated points of definition.

There is also specific evidence of work on the subject in other media. The 1961 catalogue lists a watercolour, no. 794, and a graphite study measuring 27 × 23 cm in connection with the oil. Its separate entry for the watercolour gives dimensions of 26 × 21 cm and again identifies the Bodeau girls at Mesnil.^[1] The smaller sheet is therefore a distinct related object, with its own catalogue entry and history, rather than another set of dimensions for this canvas.

The related works show that Morisot explored the subject beyond this single canvas, although their catalogue entries do not reconstruct the sequence of her decisions. A broader context comes from the Musée Marmottan Monet’s account of her later practice: it explains how work in pastel could help her develop compositions and colour harmonies before painting.^[11] The studies listed for Young Girls at the Window are watercolour and graphite, so that general account should not be mistaken for evidence of an additional pastel for this particular picture. What matters here is the documented movement between media around the same subject.

From a country setting to exhibitions

The catalogue records the oil in Morisot’s 1896 memorial exhibition as no. 94. It also lists appearances in 1941, London in 1950, Limoges in 1952 and Dieppe in 1957.^[1] The painting’s quiet, local subject thus acquired a public history through exhibitions extending well beyond the artist’s lifetime. These entries help distinguish the oil from the smaller watercolour, which has its own exhibition list in the catalogue.

The picture’s arrangement has an inviting ease. Two girls sit together; a cat rests below; a garden fills the opening behind them. Longer looking reveals a precise set of relationships. One face turns towards the other, the light dress balances the foliage, and the branches repeat the curves found in clothing and hair. The window holds these elements within a recognisable domestic setting while allowing colour to travel freely through it. The sense of intimacy comes from that close arrangement of people and place, with their thoughts left their own.