Edouard MANET (France 1832-1883) - Berthe Morisot, 1872, Etching

Edouard MANET (France 1832-1883)
Berthe Morisot, 1872
Etching
From the german version of the book "Histoire d'Édouard Manet et de son œuvre" of Theodore Duret, published by Paul Cassirer in Berlin in 1910.
13 x 16 cm (5.1 x 6.3 inches)

Manet portrays in this etching of 1872 the painter Berthe Morisot. He met her in 1868 and made in the years several portraits of her. Morisot was the only woman to exhibit during the first exhibition
of the famous Impressionist group at the studio of Nadar in 1874, and soon became one of the leaders of the movement. The same year she married Manet's brother, Eugene.

Jean C. Harris stated of this work, "…this etching comes from the oil portrait of Morisot of 1872, but is smaller in scale and the image is reversed as compared with that in the oil. In the etching,
Manet rejects to some extent the varied vocabulary of strokes which he used in The Boy with Soap Bubbles of 1869 in favor of a more simplified rendering with long, uniformly fine, vertical lines…Many
wispy shapes, the ribbons and the hair, break the simple contour. Yet these lines do not function as independent calligraphic accents, but retain their functions as delineators of the characteristic
elements of Morisot's appearance" (Harris 216). This intimate portrait of fellow Impressionist Berthe Morisot depicts the care and skill utilized by Manet in executing this piece. Dressed in a fine
hat and clothes characteristic of the time period, Morisot's expression appears confident and pleased to be seated on the other side of the easel.