On the Terrace

On a terrace with a railing, a woman in a straw hat sits in a chair, and beyond her spreads a green hill and a sea dotted with white sails. A red basket sits on the chair in the foreground.

It was painted in the summer of 1874, the year of the first Impressionist exhibition. The place is the villa of Madame Lucien Boursier, a relative on Morisot's father's side, at Fecamp on the Normandy coast, and Madame Boursier also served as the model.

The model wears a relatively relaxed outfit: what seems to be a two-piece outing dress with a tailored collar, and a straw hat. The composition looking down on the distant view from the terrace is bold, and people enjoying yachting can be made out on the sea. It is one of the 12 works Morisot showed at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877, and it caught the eye of critics who defended Impressionism and won their praise.