How does this artwork elucidate its Analysis?
At first sight, the connection between Morisot's painting and the Greek myth of Psyche seems to be far-fetched. The woman depicted does not really come across as someone from the Greek mythology. There is no trace of her beloved Amor either. Nevertheless, at the time when Morisot made this work, the current image was closely associated with her maker. Morisot had married Eugène Manet, younger brother of the painter Édouard Manet, in 1874. She had just entered a new phase in her life, where she would try to reconcile her existence as a wife and later as a mother with being an artist, which would cost her a lot of effort.As in so many of her works, Morisot tries to touch the deeper female 'psyche' in her work. She believed that female artists were better able to do this than men. In 1890 she wrote in her diary: "The truth is that our strength lies in the feeling, in intuition, in our gaze, which is more delicate than men's. We can calculate anything, as long as we don't spoil everything with clumsiness, pedantry, and sentimentality. I would like to continue working until I die. I wish others wouldn't give me such a hard time."
Art historian Whitney Chadwick wrote of Psyche in 1990: "Paintings like this normally appeal to the conventional association between women and mirrors and to the notion that vanity is 'proper' to them. Morisot's painting, on the other hand, can be regarded as a daring emancipatory and sympathetic portrayal of female self-awareness and emerging female sexuality for the time."
Psyche Édouard Manet Eugène Manet Amor