Lot Essay
Between 1881 and 1884, Morisot and her family spent the summers at a country house in Bougival, a resort spot on the Seine not far from Versailles where Monet, Renoir and Pissarro had all painted before the Franco-Prussian War. In Bougival, Morisot began a series of outdoor portraits, painting her family, her friends and her neighbors--most often, her daughter Julie--on the lush grounds surrounding her home. Executed during Morisot's first summer at Bougival, Après le déjeuner depicts a young woman named Marie seated in the conservatory behind Morisot's house, with boisterous garden foliage visible all around.
Morisot was enchanted by Bougival, and quickly grew attached to her house there. In particular, she relished the fact that she could move about the countryside unchaperoned, a freedom which, as a woman, she was not afforded in the public spaces of newly modernized Paris. Julie, who was three years old when the family first visited Bougival, also enjoyed her summers there; as Morisot recounted in a letter to a friend dated 1881:
...I shall tell you that she likes the street more than anything in the world, that she makes advances to all the children in Bougival, and is very popular there. From every door one hears, "Good day, Mademoiselle Julie." When she is asked her name she answers very politely, "Bibi Manet." This made two cocottes walking along the bank laugh till they cried. They no doubt thought that she was the daughter of the famous [Edouard] Manet put out to nurse in this village of boating girls. (ed. D. Rouart, Berthe Morisot: The Correspondence, London, 1987, pp. 116-117)
The summers in Bougival were a time of great productivity for Morisot. With their complex treatment of color and space, the pictures which she executed there mark a definitive turning point in her artistic development. In particular, color is used in the Bougival series not merely to achieve descriptive and decorative aims but also to create a sense of spatial ambiguity, one of the hallmarks of Morisot's later work. As Charles Stuckey has explained:
...it is clear that without relinquishing her free brushwork, Morisot had already begun by 1881 to formulate [a] more sophisticated approach to theme and color...these Bougival pictures are characterized both by the calculated interplay of opposing complimentary tones that resonate and thus heighten the illusion of space and by the contrasting interplay of closely related tones with just the opposite effect... The unedited appearance of the setting in Morisot's painting and the seeming spontaneity of the brushwork notwithstanding, the artist calculated every nuance. (C.F. Stuckey, op. cit., pp. 94-95)
Twelve of the pictures which Morisot painted during the summer of 1881--Après le déjeuner among them--were included in the seventh Impressionist exhibition, held in Paris in March of 1882. As Julie had fallen ill with bronchitis during the winter of 1881 while the family was traveling in Italy, Morisot brought her to Nice to recuperate during the first months of 1882; Eugène Manet returned to Paris alone to oversee the framing and hanging of his wife's paintings at the Impressionist show. Although the majority of Morisot's paintings were not yet in place when most critics came to prepare their reviews, her work nonetheless attracted a good deal of acclaim. Durand-Ruel in particular was impressed by her contributions: he
purchased a painting of Julie playing in the garden at Bougival (Bataille and Wildenstein, no. 107; Private Collection) and took Après le déjeuner and an additional garden scene (Bataille and Wildenstein, no. 105; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen) on consignment. In a letter to Morisot dated March of 1882, Eugène concluded:
Edouard who came to the exhibition this morning says that your pictures are among the best... Duret who has returned from London congratulated me on your paintings. I have no doubt about your future success... (ed. D. Rouart, op. cit., p. 124)
Morisot was enchanted by Bougival, and quickly grew attached to her house there. In particular, she relished the fact that she could move about the countryside unchaperoned, a freedom which, as a woman, she was not afforded in the public spaces of newly modernized Paris. Julie, who was three years old when the family first visited Bougival, also enjoyed her summers there; as Morisot recounted in a letter to a friend dated 1881:
...I shall tell you that she likes the street more than anything in the world, that she makes advances to all the children in Bougival, and is very popular there. From every door one hears, "Good day, Mademoiselle Julie." When she is asked her name she answers very politely, "Bibi Manet." This made two cocottes walking along the bank laugh till they cried. They no doubt thought that she was the daughter of the famous [Edouard] Manet put out to nurse in this village of boating girls. (ed. D. Rouart, Berthe Morisot: The Correspondence, London, 1987, pp. 116-117)
The summers in Bougival were a time of great productivity for Morisot. With their complex treatment of color and space, the pictures which she executed there mark a definitive turning point in her artistic development. In particular, color is used in the Bougival series not merely to achieve descriptive and decorative aims but also to create a sense of spatial ambiguity, one of the hallmarks of Morisot's later work. As Charles Stuckey has explained:
...it is clear that without relinquishing her free brushwork, Morisot had already begun by 1881 to formulate [a] more sophisticated approach to theme and color...these Bougival pictures are characterized both by the calculated interplay of opposing complimentary tones that resonate and thus heighten the illusion of space and by the contrasting interplay of closely related tones with just the opposite effect... The unedited appearance of the setting in Morisot's painting and the seeming spontaneity of the brushwork notwithstanding, the artist calculated every nuance. (C.F. Stuckey, op. cit., pp. 94-95)
Twelve of the pictures which Morisot painted during the summer of 1881--Après le déjeuner among them--were included in the seventh Impressionist exhibition, held in Paris in March of 1882. As Julie had fallen ill with bronchitis during the winter of 1881 while the family was traveling in Italy, Morisot brought her to Nice to recuperate during the first months of 1882; Eugène Manet returned to Paris alone to oversee the framing and hanging of his wife's paintings at the Impressionist show. Although the majority of Morisot's paintings were not yet in place when most critics came to prepare their reviews, her work nonetheless attracted a good deal of acclaim. Durand-Ruel in particular was impressed by her contributions: he
purchased a painting of Julie playing in the garden at Bougival (Bataille and Wildenstein, no. 107; Private Collection) and took Après le déjeuner and an additional garden scene (Bataille and Wildenstein, no. 105; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen) on consignment. In a letter to Morisot dated March of 1882, Eugène concluded:
Edouard who came to the exhibition this morning says that your pictures are among the best... Duret who has returned from London congratulated me on your paintings. I have no doubt about your future success... (ed. D. Rouart, op. cit., p. 124)