Berthe Morisot
French, 1841-1895

Young Girl with a Dog, 1887 ca.
oil on canvas

Michael Armand Hammer and the Armand Hammer Foundation
Loan



Morisot by Edouard Manet, detail from The Balcony, 1868-69.

"It is important to express oneself... provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience." - Berthe Morisot

COMMENTS

Paule Gobillard and her younger sister were daughters of Berthe Morisot’s sister and, like Morisot’s own daughter, Julie, were among her favorite models. Berthe Morisot had a warm, maternal feeling for children and young people. This, coupled with her keen intelligence, produced some of the most sympathetic portraits of the Impressionist School. Hers was an essentially feminine vision and, indeed, most of her subjects were women. Denis Rouart, her grandson, described the sitters who most appealed to her: beloved friends and family, frequent guests, and favorite children.

The Hammer portrait, of about 1887, is one of the last pictures she painted in the style of her highly successful first period (1878-88). In this decade, more assured of herself as a painter than at any other time, Berthe Morisot brought together the two main influences of her life. On the one hand, she explored the lessons of the 1860s learned from her friend Corot. At the age of sixty-four, he had inspired her to see the effects of natural light and atmosphere. On the other hand, since meeting in 1868 her future brother-in-law, Edouard Manet, she had been increasingly liberated by his unconventional approach to painting. It was his freedom of brushwork and his volatile spirit that attracted her to his style and to him. In this period, there are no preliminary sketches or even superficial outlines on the canvas; there are only bold, irregular, and rapid strokes of paint. Like most Impressionists, Berthe Morisot worked with speed and spontaneity, directly on canvas. Rouart described her particular technique as “brushwork like fireworks.” His phrase is brilliantly exemplified by the Hammer picture. Within a year of this picture, Berthe Morisot’s style was to change radically. She became interested in mass and form. The explosive slashes of color typical of her work until 1888 gave way to long, continuous lines enclosing smooth, serene shapes.

- Armand Hammer Collection Exhibitions, Atlanta, 1977-78, pp. 17-18

SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

The date of this painting can be deduced from the accurate likeness Morisot has captured of her niece, Paule Gobillard, the daughter of her sister Yves. The fashionably dressed Paule appears to have the youthful beauty of a twenty-year-old. Confidently executed at the height of Morisot’s artistic powers with rapid slashes of the brush, this portrait exemplifies her innovative mobilization of the technical effects of pastel and watercolor in her work in oil. If Morisot has lavished attention on her niece’s pleasing appearance as a confection of color slathered onto the canvas, she has also captured a sense of her sitter’s thoughtful self-absorption. Paule went on to become an artist in her own right, although she never achieved the fame of her celebrated aunt.

- Ridley Tree Gallery, 2016