Summer's Day (A Summer Moment / On the Lake)

In Paris's Bois de Boulogne, where sunlight sparkles, two elegant women relax on a small boat. It's a fresh summer scene, where one can almost hear the shimmering of the dazzling water surface and the rustling of the trees.

However, behind this happy and peaceful everyday scene, lay Morisot's earnest struggles as both a mother and a painter.

The year before this painting was created, she had just given birth to her long-awaited first child, her daughter Julie. After childbirth and a long period indoors, she was eager to resume outdoor painting, but she was reluctant to leave her young child with a wet nurse for extended periods.

Furthermore, in the society of the time, it was an era when upper-class women painting outdoors alone were met with strange looks.

Therefore, she resorted to a desperate measure: hiring a professional model to accompany her to the site during the time she took her child and wet nurse for a walk in the park.

To reconcile her maternal duties of childcare with her irrepressible passion as a painter, she placed a model in a boat in the park, and held her paintbrush during limited hours while staying close to her child.

Her distinctive bold and rapid 'zigzag' brushwork was ridiculed by critics of the time, who asked, 'Why doesn't she finish it?' and called it 'unfinished.'

However, it may have been, despite being bound by various social and domestic constraints as a woman, a testament to her painter's tenacity, her unwavering desire to capture the fleeting light and the brilliance of life before her on canvas forever.