Lady with a Bowl of Violets combines Lilla Cabot Perry's love of light-infused impressionist colors and bravura brushwork, plus her familiarity with Japanese aesthetics and her affinity for portraying young women within domestic interiors. Painted after the family's return from Tokyo, this canvas features a Japanese color woodblock print behind the sitter's head on one side and a simple floral arrangement on the other.1 Both print and flowers are cropped dramatically, in a manner reminiscent of traditional Japanese art; the curious and daring compositional emptiness of the left side of the picture derives from the same source.

Although the sitter's head is rendered in a relatively realistic manner, the rest of the canvas exhibits the loose, painterly brushwork favored by Perry and other impressionists. She manages to suggest the texture of the young woman's skin and the heavy white lace trim on her gown with just a few broad strokes of pigment. Even more radical are the vibrant orange highlights representing reflected light from the fireplace. As intriguing as Perry's technique and composition may be, the most affecting aspect of this painting is the mysterious, slightly melancholy expression on the young woman's face.

1Meredith Martindale, Lilla Cabot Perry: An American Impressionist, National Museum of Women in the Arts: Washington, D.C., 1990, p. 154.