Women's Backs --- Day 9/339

Walk: Hood for exercise

Distance: 3 (aching back) miles, yoga here and there

Berthe Morisot, Lady at her Toilette, 1875, 23 3/4 x 31 5/8", oil on canvas

So, it's been coming for a while, and finally Ciwt's back went a bit kaput on the pickleball court.  Ouch.

This put Ciwt in mind of the many, many works of art portraying women's backs, entire behinds really. And most were a (covert) form of erotica, often privately commissioned by men and kept in their own private quarters.

Even Berthe Morisot moves discretely into erotic territory with her Woman at her Toilette.  But Morisot, the first and only - save Mary Cassatt - original female Impressional artist, also lends the woman a sense of worldliness. She's feminine, but there's no languidity or passive allure here. This woman with her back to us seems modern, some one who moves among men, someone going knowingly about the business of putting herself together, perhaps to earn her own livelihood.