拍品專文
For the freshness of her style, the intimacy of her subjects, and the charm of her personality, Morisot was often labeled "feminine" by her contemporaries as well as by more recent critics. Like her friend Mary Cassatt she often portrayed woman and children, but her style is quite unlike Cassatt's careful linearity and deliberately flattened figures and spaces. Morisot's work conveys a sense of sponteneity and naturalness. In her interior scenes, for which her daughter and niece were often subjects, the accidental pose and fleeting impression of a particular moment in time are set down with intimacy, warmth and serenity. In her later years she turned her attention somewhat more to drawing, giving greater emphasis to the plasticity of her forms. In this she was not unlike Renoir who, after 1883, also sought greater compositional structure, or with Degas who had always maintained strong draftsmanship. (R. Becker, Woman Artists 1550-1950, Los Angeles, County Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, 1989, p. 233)
Julie écoutant is a study for the larger painting of the same subject and year titled Le Piano (Bataille, fig. 233). The sitters are Julie Manet, Morisot's daughter, and Jeanne Gobillard, Berthe Morisot's niece, whose hands are shown on the keys of the piano.
Yves Rouart, Delphine Montalant and Alain Clairet will include this painting in the forthcoming volume I (Oil Paintings) of their revised edition of the Morisot catalogue raisonné.
Julie écoutant is a study for the larger painting of the same subject and year titled Le Piano (Bataille, fig. 233). The sitters are Julie Manet, Morisot's daughter, and Jeanne Gobillard, Berthe Morisot's niece, whose hands are shown on the keys of the piano.
Yves Rouart, Delphine Montalant and Alain Clairet will include this painting in the forthcoming volume I (Oil Paintings) of their revised edition of the Morisot catalogue raisonné.