Berthe Morisot click to enlarge

Berthe Morisot married Édouard Manet's brother Eugene at the end of 1874. Eugene Manet had met her through his artist brother, for whom she had posed several times, in particular for The Balcony of 1868. It was Fantin-Latour who had introduced her to Manet, who subsequently wrote to him: "I quite agree with you, the Morisot sisters are charming. What a pity it is that they are not men!" The daughters of a well-to-do magistrate, Berthe and her sister Edma had studied drawing at their father's desire. Berthe went on to become a pupil of Corot. She became acquainted with Daubigny and Daumier, then Manet, and in time all the avant-garde painters of the day. For a talented young woman-painter, it was hardly possible to have better friends and teachers.

Le Gamin (The Urchin - Boy With a Dog) click to enlarge

Manet represented her in three prints: two lithographs, the one reproduced here, and another, an outline drawing in the same attitude; and an etching. The latter is reversed with respect to the painting of 1872 on which all three prints are based: Berthe Morisot with a Bunch of Violets (21⁵/8 in. x 15 in.), shown at the 1973 Malraux exhibition in Vence and there entitled Berthe Morisot with a Black Hat, a better chosen title since the hat plays a more important part in the composition than the purple touch of the small bouquet. It is interesting to compare Manet's handling of the lidiographic medium in Le Gamin (The Urchin - Boy With a Dog) and in this Portrait of Berthe Morisot. In the space of ten years, great changes have taken place. The face of Le Gamin, done in 1862, was shaded by means by deft strokes of the crayon skimming over the stone. The face of Berthe Morisot is devoid of shading, the sheer white of the paper being used here to set off her costume and her black hat. The material of which these are made is rendered with spirited, criss-crossing strokes of the crayon, more or less serried for die tone and the half-tone. The basket and clothes of Le Gamin are much more carefully drawn and elaborately worked, with short, more or less emphatic strokes of the crayon, conveying a wider range of half-tones. Berthe Morisot is drawn in an incomparably freer, more expeditious manner. Manet's aim was to focus our interest on the contrast between the whiteness of the feminine face and the black of the clothes. The bunch of violets has become a shapeless white blob under the V of the neckline. The coat, however, is not of an unrelieved black. Without attenuating the contrast he aimed at, Manet has broken up the rather too forthright expanse of black with faint white spots obtained by scratching the stone, by scoring it with a point; the hat has been similarly treated. This lithograph of Berthe Morisot and another of her drawn in outline, except for the hair, together with The Races, The Execution of Maximilian, The Barricade and Civil War, were all published in 1884, a year after Manet's death, each being printed in an edition of 100 impressions.