Berthe Morisot at the table

In France under the Third Republic, polite society no longer placed all dishes on the table at once as before: they were brought one after another in a set order — soup, fish course, entrée, roast (often game), sweet entremets, fruits and preserves. At the Manet-Morisot table, this ceremonious progression was accompanied, in summer, by freer meals taken in the garden at Bougival or Mézy, close to the vegetable patch and orchard.

Berthe Morisot's bourgeois cuisine comes down to two gestures: fresh, coating butter that binds sauces and vegetables, and produce picked that very morning from the vegetable garden or orchard of the country houses. It is the same luminous freshness she pursues in her canvases.