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Lot Essay
The same year Morisot painted Jeune femme en mauve she sent ten works to the Cinquième Exposition des Impressionnistes. While this painting was not included in the exhibition, the critic Philippe Burty's comments that appeared in La République concerning her paintings seem equally relevant to it.
Madame Berthe Morisot handles both palette and paintbrush
with truly surprising delicacy. Not since the 18th century, not since Fragonard, have such pale colors been applied with so much
boldness of spirit. In their dresses of white or lilac or raw yellow, these young ladies...embody the true candor, the true charm of youth. (Quoted in A. Clairet et al, op. cit., p. 89)
Morisot was especially interested in the effects of light on white surfaces and the tonal range of Jeune femme en mauve is typical of her carefully calibrated harmonies that arose from this study. While having always been a colorist at heart, Morisot's palette becomes even more crucial to her compositions in her works of the 1880s and 1890s. "she increasingly sought to solve color decisions with drawing and drawing decisions with color." (W.P. Scott, "Morisot's Style and Technique", Berthe Morisot, Impressionist, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., 1987, p. 187). Her work in watercolor led her to experiment with a rapid, flickering style of brushwork that she applied to her oil paintings as well, earning her a reputation as a leading exponent of the Impressionist technique. Her unique style was summarized by Jean Ajalbert, "If I may so express myself, she eliminates cumbersome epithets and heavy adverbs in her terse sentence. Everything is subject and verb. She has a kind of telegraphic style gleaming with words. Two words express her thought" (La Revue Moderne, 20 June 1886).
Though Morisot often used members of her own family as sitters, she did not intend her pictures to be understood as portraits of them. Instead, she sought to capture the essence of modern life in more general and objective terms. To emphasize this point she gave her works simple descriptive titles, intentionally devoid of personal and narrative references. As Charles Euphrussi writes, "Her subjects are of only secondary importance, one might almost term them insignificant, they are but a pretext for trying various luminous effects and harmonies, and are accepted (or rather tolerated) so as to provide the eye with a resting point" (La Chronique des Arts, 23 April 1881).
Madame Berthe Morisot handles both palette and paintbrush
with truly surprising delicacy. Not since the 18th century, not since Fragonard, have such pale colors been applied with so much
boldness of spirit. In their dresses of white or lilac or raw yellow, these young ladies...embody the true candor, the true charm of youth. (Quoted in A. Clairet et al, op. cit., p. 89)
Morisot was especially interested in the effects of light on white surfaces and the tonal range of Jeune femme en mauve is typical of her carefully calibrated harmonies that arose from this study. While having always been a colorist at heart, Morisot's palette becomes even more crucial to her compositions in her works of the 1880s and 1890s. "she increasingly sought to solve color decisions with drawing and drawing decisions with color." (W.P. Scott, "Morisot's Style and Technique", Berthe Morisot, Impressionist, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., 1987, p. 187). Her work in watercolor led her to experiment with a rapid, flickering style of brushwork that she applied to her oil paintings as well, earning her a reputation as a leading exponent of the Impressionist technique. Her unique style was summarized by Jean Ajalbert, "If I may so express myself, she eliminates cumbersome epithets and heavy adverbs in her terse sentence. Everything is subject and verb. She has a kind of telegraphic style gleaming with words. Two words express her thought" (La Revue Moderne, 20 June 1886).
Though Morisot often used members of her own family as sitters, she did not intend her pictures to be understood as portraits of them. Instead, she sought to capture the essence of modern life in more general and objective terms. To emphasize this point she gave her works simple descriptive titles, intentionally devoid of personal and narrative references. As Charles Euphrussi writes, "Her subjects are of only secondary importance, one might almost term them insignificant, they are but a pretext for trying various luminous effects and harmonies, and are accepted (or rather tolerated) so as to provide the eye with a resting point" (La Chronique des Arts, 23 April 1881).