In addition to using her mother and
sisters as models, Berthe Morisot also painted someone who was almost like a
member of the family—her maid, Pasie.
Berthe’s mother had taken the usual
route to find her lady’s maid. She brought a teen-aged village girl back with her
after a visit to her hometown in the south of France. Even with her auburn hair
pulled into a simple bun, wearing a dark blue domestic’s uniform topped with a
fresh white apron, Pasie was an appealing model. Berthe painted several scenes
of the young maid going about her work in the dining room—clearing off the table
and arranging things on the sideboard. One of these, In the Dining Room (1886) captures Pasie at the instant she turns
around, inciting the family dog to yap at her twirling hem. She stirs something—furniture
polish?—in a small bowl, and behind her, linens hang on the sideboard door. It
is a quotidian scene, but marked by Berthe’s use of light, which floods in the windows, and her broken brushstrokes that make the background alive with movement.
While separated by class, it’s
likely that Berthe, so reserved that she was seen as aloof, was more intimate
with her maid than with her social equals. Who better than the person helping
you dress and arrange your hair would know which social engagements you were
anticipating, and which you returned from disappointed?
When Berthe
married Eugène Manet, Pasie followed the couple to their new home. Later, when
Berthe had a child, the artist depicted Pasie and her daughter, Julie, together
in scenes like The Fable (1883). Julie
is rapt, as she is in another scene where she watches Pasie sew. It’s clear
that the maid is on informal, even friendly, terms with Julie, her little shadow.
When lady’s maids reached the age of
30, they were typically let go to return to their villages, marry and start
their own families. In La Luministe,
I have Pasie choose to stay after Eugène’s death, when Berthe needs her most,
until Berthe makes a decision:
I let Pasie
go.
One day as she was
helping me with the difficult task of sorting through Eugene's clothes, I asked,
"Is your clockmaker still waiting for you?"
She understood my
meaning and burst into tears, saying. “But Madame, how can I leave you now?”
Tears sprang to my eyes,
too, and I had to pause to restrain my emotions before I answered, “I’ve had my husband; it is
your turn to be happy.”
It
pleased me to think of Pasie standing behind the counter of an horlogerie, surrounded by chiming
clocks and
glittering pocket watches, a much more pleasant position than working from dawn to
dusk at a
bakery or grocery. I sent her off with a trousseau of my dresses and
hats that I deemed too frivolous to wear as
a widow. Pasie would return to
Toulouse, where she would marry and work next to her husband, the prettiest
and best-dressed
shopkeeper’s wife in town.
Almost--but not quite--like another sister--Pasie, poor
girl from a provincial village—was
immortalized by Berthe Morisot.
