Jeune fille au Repos

 

Berthe Morisot

  1841 - 1895 (biography)

1889 /1910 

drypoint 

3 1/4 x 4 11/16" platemark 

unsigned 

not stated 

title, name, and old inventory numbers along bottom edge in unidentified hand; cancellation marks in plate 

Bailly-Herzberg 7ii; Johnson 83:12 

light cream wove 

ii/ii; with cancellation piercings; published by Duret 

Theodore Duret in "Manet and the French Impressionists" 

18460 

$750.00 

The subject of this drypoint was model Jeanne-Marie Fourmanoir. The first state was printed by Porcaboeuf and issued by Rouartin 1904 in an edition of about 25. The plate was then cancelled by piercing the two circles in the edges of the plate, as seen in this impression. The "cancelled" print was republished in 1910 by Duret and later by Vollard.

Morisot’s work often depicted the private realms of women which were so darkly veiled in Victorian era Europe. The result is a legacy of images illuminating the rare moments of solitude, such as in this portrait, experienced by women without the weight of social expectations.

Though barred from formal art school due to her gender, Morisot’s bourgeois upbringing afforded her and her sisters private art lessons. It wasn’t until taking lessons from Camille Corot, however, that she flourished. She learned to paint en plein air, and soon began to explore the stylistic approach that would become Impressionism. She would become the rare exception to the rule of male-only participants in leading salons, and her work would stand alongside her peers at the seminal 1873 exhibition, “Société Anonyme des Artistes-Peintures, Sculpteurs, et Graveurs,” gaining critical acclaim from Le Figaro critic Albert Wolff.

Despite these milestones, and having overcome not only the strife that nipped at the heels of Impressionists but of women as well, Morisot was relegated for the most part to the shadows of art history until very recently.