19th-century fantasies about women often involved the woman at her toilette.

No, people weren’t making paintings of women taking their morning dump. That would be gross.

What we call the morning make-up routine, the French call 'toilette.' Not to be confused with the bidet, that just cleans your sh*t. The toilette is where the magic happens, where women make themselves perfect for the chancing gaze of the man, any man. Male artists made painting after painting in an effort to understand the private lives of women. They may have found it a little hard to find the surface, let alone scratch it. Berthe Morisot didn’t have that problem.

Morisot was born into a privileged family. She and her sister, Edma, were both fantastic painters. Manet was so disappointed that they were women he told Henri Fantin-Latour “It’s annoying they’re not men." But what Manet thought was a disadvantage, was exactly what made their work so insightful. They had access to a world that men could only vaguely grasp. Their subjects were comfortable. This was their sanctuary. It wasn’t created for the man to look at. It existed for women.

The pastels and the white lend a delicacy that is ripe and feminine. Of all the Impressionist painters, Berthe had the roughest execution. Some believe that it is the reason why she never figured in the male-dominated list of famous Impressionist painters. That just seems like an alternate excuse to steer us away from the fact that Berthe Morisot was a woman. Manet was right when he worried about her, but Berthe was a badass. She continued to work.

She would usually use her sister to model for her, but we are not sure who this young woman is. Berthe’s privileged birth helped her flit between worlds. It allowed her to paint women of high social status, something male artists were unable to do. She could be having tea with the rich and beautiful of Parisian society, and then head out for coffee with the Impressionists later. This painting is just one of a theme that Morisot frequently returned to. She painted a number of women from different classes of Parisienne society. Prostitutes, friends, sisters - all just women being themselves.