Manet was profoundly marked by the Franco-Prussian war and the
Commune, throughout which he had remained in Paris, serving in the
garde nationale, and unable to paint. Towards the end of 1871, he
resumed his work taking up his former models including Berthe
Morisot, a young painter with whom he shared a deep friendship and
who would marry one of his brothers a few months later.
Rather than using the uniform light he often employed in
his portraits, Manet chose here to light his model vividly from
the side so that Berthe Morisot's face seems to be all light and
shadow. Here represented with black eyes (in fact they were
green), she is dressed all in black, with a matching hat, no doubt
better to enhance her "Spanish" beauty remarked on since her first
appearance in Manet's work in 1869.
This sublime composition in blacks is yet another
confirmation of Manet's virtuosity. But he may also have been
using the work to impart a lesson to his young disciple, reminding
her of the stunning possibilities of black at a time when her own
painting was becoming lighter and lighter in tone as she followed
the path to Impressionism.
This strange and spellbinding portrait was rapidly
considered by his friends to be one of the artist's masterpieces.
Paul Valery also praised it in his 1932 foreword to the catalogue
of the Orangerie retrospective. "I do not rank anything in Manet's
work higher than a certain portrait of Berthe Morisot dated 1872".
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