ABSTRACT
Berthe Morisot's Wet Nurse and Julie of 1879 is an extraordinary painting. Wet-nursing was frequently the subject of humorous caricatures right down to the beginning of the twentieth century, when sterilization and pasteurization enabled mothers to substitute the newly hygienic bottle for the human breast-and thereby gave rise to cartoons dealing with the wet nurse attempting to compete with her replacement. Reading The Wet Nurse as a work scene inevitably locates it within the representation of the thematics of work in nineteenth-century painting, particularly that of the woman worker. It also raises the issue of the status of work as a motif in Impressionist painting-its presence or absence as a viable theme for the group of artists which counted Morisot as an active member. This chapter examines the particular profession of wet-nursing itself as it relates to the subject of Morisot's canvas.
