Portrait of Berthe Morisot

Desboutin is known for his intimate portraits of artists, writers, and cultural figures. This depiction of the painter Berthe Morisot is typical of Desboutin’s work in drypoint—a technique in which the artist directly scratches the image with a sharp needle, effectively drawing onto the copper plate. Desboutin most likely met Morisot through his friends Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, and the two participated together in the second Impressionist exhibition in the spring of 1876. In this print, produced probably later that year, Desboutin juxtaposed the highly worked, rich blacks of Morisot’s dress, hair, eyes with the faint outline of her armchair and the then-fashionable Japanese fan in her hands.

Credit: Rogers Fund, 1922