.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘Berthe Morisot stands unrivalled’. This was the emphatic response from a critic upon seeing Berthe Morisot’s work at the Second Impressionist exhibition of 1876. Painted a year earlier, in 1875, Femme en noir, which is also known as Avant le théâtre, was most likely included in this important exhibition and attracted widespread critical acclaim. Depicting an elegant and fashionably attired young woman making her way to the theatre, Femme en noir is a rare full-length portrait in Berthe Morisot’s oeuvre, and undoubtedly one of the finest works of her career. With delicate, softly feathered brushstrokes that capture the gentle fall of light upon the model’s face and shoulders, and the shimmering texture of the black silk fabric of her dress, Femme en noir demonstrates Morisot’s nascent impressionist style, exemplifying her ability at imbuing her painting with a luminescence that distinguishes her from her impressionist colleagues. Originally owned by impressionist collector, Alphonse Portier, Femme en noir was exhibited in the first retrospective of Morisot’s work held in 1892, as well as in the posthumous, memorial exhibition organised by her daughter, Julie Manet, at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1896. The legendary Hollywood actor, Edward G. Robinson, later acquired this painting. This distinguished provenance and exhibition history not only serve as a testament to the significance of this painting within Morisot’s oeuvre but reflect its importance within the history of Impressionism as a whole.
Adorned in a dramatic and opulent black evening dress trimmed with delicate white flowers along the skirt, long white silk gloves, and a dark ribbon around her neck, the female subject of Femme en noir is a quintessential Parisienne – a chic, fashionable young woman that had become one of the central and most iconic protagonists of Second Empire and Third Republic Paris. In the rapidly modernising capital, fashion had assumed a central role in modern day life. The renovation of Paris – known as Haussmannisation – had transformed the city from a medieval web of narrow, winding streets, into a grand metropolis, whose wide boulevards and sweeping vistas provided the perfect place for the city’s inhabitants to see and be seen. In a flourishing economy, the wealthy bourgeoisie had more money to spend on the latest fashions, which had been made all the more accessible due to the proliferation of grand department stores. Fashion flooded visual culture: fashion plates, illustrations and periodicals became part of the typical ephemera of everyday life, while contemporary art likewise reflected this new cultural phenomenon.
In their quest to capture impressions of modern life in all its varied forms, the Impressionists turned to the people of Paris as the subjects of their paintings. While mythological nudes and historical heroes filled the canvases of academic art, the inhabitants of the capital, their modern dress, social rituals and customs, populated the work of many of the Impressionists. Fashion became the quintessence of Parisian modernity and thus one of the central components of modern painting; as the poet Charles Baudelaire described, it was the aim of the artist, ‘to extract from fashion the poetry that resides in its historical envelope, to distil the eternal from the transitory…’ (C. Baudelaire, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, 1859, in P.E. Charvet, ed., Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists, Cambridge, 1981, p. 402).
Fashion played an important role in the work of Morisot and perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in Femme en noir. From an affluent, upper-class family, throughout her career Morisot depicted women, primarily members of her family, in an array of different formal and fashionable costumes, from day and morning dresses to opulent ball gowns. This striking black evening gown was in fact most likely one of Morisot’s own. In the same year that she painted the present work, she was photographed by Charles Reutlinger in a dress that is almost identical to the one seen here. Standing in a casual pose, with her elbow resting on a wooden podium and her head slightly tilted, in this photograph Morisot greets the camera with a coolly enigmatic gaze. She is the very epitome of the Parisienne: elegantly dressed, self-possessed and completely self-assured.
While Morisot and her impressionist colleagues frequently depicted fashionably dressed women at the theatre or opera, seated in private boxes or presented against ornate backdrops, in the present work, the artist has removed all background detail, placing the model within an ambiguous setting. This unadorned background suggests that the model had posed in Morisot’s studio. At around the same time that Morisot painted the present work, Manet, a close friend of the artist, painted a similar work entitled La Parisienne (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm). As in Femme en noir, a single, full-length figure dressed in black is depicted within an undefined, unidentifiable setting. By removing all contextual and narrative detail, in both of these paintings Morisot and Manet have presented a ‘type’ rather than an individualised portrait of a woman. Yet, by forcing the viewer to focus solely on the figure herself – her expression, her costume and her idiosyncratic demeanour – we are presented in both of these works with a particularly novel and enigmatic vision of a woman. Unable to completely ascertain the figure’s exact identity and comprehend her compelling gaze, when regarding Femme en noir, the viewer is left speculating upon what lies beyond the ostentatious display of costume and the conscious obedience to social norms. ‘Behind Morisot’s women’s reserve’, Anne Higonnet has written, ‘we sense a life all the more intense because it is withheld’ (A. Higonnet, quoted in, ‘Fashion and Intimate Portraits’, in exh. cat., Impressionism, Fashion, & Modernity, Chicago, New York & Paris, 2013, p. 112).
Adorned in a dramatic and opulent black evening dress trimmed with delicate white flowers along the skirt, long white silk gloves, and a dark ribbon around her neck, the female subject of Femme en noir is a quintessential Parisienne – a chic, fashionable young woman that had become one of the central and most iconic protagonists of Second Empire and Third Republic Paris. In the rapidly modernising capital, fashion had assumed a central role in modern day life. The renovation of Paris – known as Haussmannisation – had transformed the city from a medieval web of narrow, winding streets, into a grand metropolis, whose wide boulevards and sweeping vistas provided the perfect place for the city’s inhabitants to see and be seen. In a flourishing economy, the wealthy bourgeoisie had more money to spend on the latest fashions, which had been made all the more accessible due to the proliferation of grand department stores. Fashion flooded visual culture: fashion plates, illustrations and periodicals became part of the typical ephemera of everyday life, while contemporary art likewise reflected this new cultural phenomenon.
In their quest to capture impressions of modern life in all its varied forms, the Impressionists turned to the people of Paris as the subjects of their paintings. While mythological nudes and historical heroes filled the canvases of academic art, the inhabitants of the capital, their modern dress, social rituals and customs, populated the work of many of the Impressionists. Fashion became the quintessence of Parisian modernity and thus one of the central components of modern painting; as the poet Charles Baudelaire described, it was the aim of the artist, ‘to extract from fashion the poetry that resides in its historical envelope, to distil the eternal from the transitory…’ (C. Baudelaire, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, 1859, in P.E. Charvet, ed., Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists, Cambridge, 1981, p. 402).
Fashion played an important role in the work of Morisot and perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in Femme en noir. From an affluent, upper-class family, throughout her career Morisot depicted women, primarily members of her family, in an array of different formal and fashionable costumes, from day and morning dresses to opulent ball gowns. This striking black evening gown was in fact most likely one of Morisot’s own. In the same year that she painted the present work, she was photographed by Charles Reutlinger in a dress that is almost identical to the one seen here. Standing in a casual pose, with her elbow resting on a wooden podium and her head slightly tilted, in this photograph Morisot greets the camera with a coolly enigmatic gaze. She is the very epitome of the Parisienne: elegantly dressed, self-possessed and completely self-assured.
While Morisot and her impressionist colleagues frequently depicted fashionably dressed women at the theatre or opera, seated in private boxes or presented against ornate backdrops, in the present work, the artist has removed all background detail, placing the model within an ambiguous setting. This unadorned background suggests that the model had posed in Morisot’s studio. At around the same time that Morisot painted the present work, Manet, a close friend of the artist, painted a similar work entitled La Parisienne (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm). As in Femme en noir, a single, full-length figure dressed in black is depicted within an undefined, unidentifiable setting. By removing all contextual and narrative detail, in both of these paintings Morisot and Manet have presented a ‘type’ rather than an individualised portrait of a woman. Yet, by forcing the viewer to focus solely on the figure herself – her expression, her costume and her idiosyncratic demeanour – we are presented in both of these works with a particularly novel and enigmatic vision of a woman. Unable to completely ascertain the figure’s exact identity and comprehend her compelling gaze, when regarding Femme en noir, the viewer is left speculating upon what lies beyond the ostentatious display of costume and the conscious obedience to social norms. ‘Behind Morisot’s women’s reserve’, Anne Higonnet has written, ‘we sense a life all the more intense because it is withheld’ (A. Higonnet, quoted in, ‘Fashion and Intimate Portraits’, in exh. cat., Impressionism, Fashion, & Modernity, Chicago, New York & Paris, 2013, p. 112).