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拍品专文
As a founding member of the Impressionist group, Berthe Morisot was among its most committed participants, contributing to all but one of the exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886. She was celebrated for the refinement of her touch and for her sensitive evocation of modern life, particularly within the domestic sphere.
A testament to Morisot’s mastery of light and to the softness of her lines, the present lot offers a tender glimpse into the artist’s personal life. Her older sister, Yves Gobillard, is portrayed reclining on a blue velvet chaise longue, her chin resting on her hand as she gazes pensively at her daughter Paule. The quiet ease of the composition, intimate in scale and in subject, reflects Morisot’s sustained interest in the private rhythms of family life.
Much like in The Artist’s Sister, Edma, with Her Daughter, Jeanne (1872), preserved at the National Gallery of Art, Morisot draws upon her own family to portray the daily rituals of bourgeois Parisian life. Set within a French Empire-style interior, Mme Gobillard wears elegant, modern springtime fashions, a sheer wash of watercolour delicately rendering the translucence of her white dress, a garment redolent of the one worn by the artist in her portrait painted by Édouard Manet - her peer and future brother-in-law.
Here, Morisot creates a subtle material dialogue: the diaphanous lightness of the white gown contrasts gently with the rich depth of the dark velvet. The refinement of her touch, airy yet deliberate, animates the fabric, dissolving solid form into atmosphere. Such handling exemplifies the artist’s singular ability to balance structure and spontaneity.
Throughout her career, Morisot relied on her sisters, nieces, and ultimately her own daughter as subjects, collapsing the distance between artistic production and lived experience. In doing so, she transformed scenes of maternal contemplation into meditations on modern femininity itself, an intimacy that is echoed by the history of this very sheet, which belonged to Yves’s youngest daughter, Jeannie Gobillard, who married the French poet Paul Valéry in 1900. Its provenance underscores the personal resonance of the work and its connection to Morisot’s familial world, while its early exhibition history further attests to its significance: it was included in the landmark monographic presentation at the Musée Jacquemart-André in 1961, and subsequently featured in the major travelling retrospective organized in 1987-1988 by the National Gallery of Art, the Kimbell Art Museum, and the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.
A testament to Morisot’s mastery of light and to the softness of her lines, the present lot offers a tender glimpse into the artist’s personal life. Her older sister, Yves Gobillard, is portrayed reclining on a blue velvet chaise longue, her chin resting on her hand as she gazes pensively at her daughter Paule. The quiet ease of the composition, intimate in scale and in subject, reflects Morisot’s sustained interest in the private rhythms of family life.
Much like in The Artist’s Sister, Edma, with Her Daughter, Jeanne (1872), preserved at the National Gallery of Art, Morisot draws upon her own family to portray the daily rituals of bourgeois Parisian life. Set within a French Empire-style interior, Mme Gobillard wears elegant, modern springtime fashions, a sheer wash of watercolour delicately rendering the translucence of her white dress, a garment redolent of the one worn by the artist in her portrait painted by Édouard Manet - her peer and future brother-in-law.
Here, Morisot creates a subtle material dialogue: the diaphanous lightness of the white gown contrasts gently with the rich depth of the dark velvet. The refinement of her touch, airy yet deliberate, animates the fabric, dissolving solid form into atmosphere. Such handling exemplifies the artist’s singular ability to balance structure and spontaneity.
Throughout her career, Morisot relied on her sisters, nieces, and ultimately her own daughter as subjects, collapsing the distance between artistic production and lived experience. In doing so, she transformed scenes of maternal contemplation into meditations on modern femininity itself, an intimacy that is echoed by the history of this very sheet, which belonged to Yves’s youngest daughter, Jeannie Gobillard, who married the French poet Paul Valéry in 1900. Its provenance underscores the personal resonance of the work and its connection to Morisot’s familial world, while its early exhibition history further attests to its significance: it was included in the landmark monographic presentation at the Musée Jacquemart-André in 1961, and subsequently featured in the major travelling retrospective organized in 1987-1988 by the National Gallery of Art, the Kimbell Art Museum, and the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.