Images of fashionable bourgeois women were Berthe Morisot’s métier. She relied on her sister Edma and her friends to sit for many such paintings. But when she was born on November 14, 1878, Berthe’s daughter, Julie, became her mother’s favorite model. Here are representative paintings from each of the five stages of Julie’s life. The accompanying quotes are from La Luministe.
Here’s my description of Julie’s first appearance, with Angèle, Berthe’s seconde mere:
As soon as I felt myself again, I began to make paintings of my baby, relying on watercolors in order to work faster. The first fine day of spring, I set up Julie and Angèle in the back garden. As always, I wanted to show my subjects surrounded by space and light. Angèle was a cloud of white in a whirling sea of green. Only her umbrella thrown to one side and her straw hat on the other anchored her to the earth. Perspective and modeling seemed beside the point.
When Julie reached toddlerhood, Berthe used hastily scribbled pastels rather than oils to capture her daughter. One such work, The Veranda, depicts only a discarded tea set and an empty chair; Julie had already made her escape.
From then on, Julie was my primary model. When she grew to be a toddler, I showed her holding her doll, or floating her toy boat in the lake in the Bois. She became an angelic, round-faced child if a sometimes impatient model.
A series of paintings of Julie and her father, Eugene Manet, is especially affecting when you remember that Eugene often cared for Julie so that Berthe could paint. Of course, when Berthe painted her family, in her own way she was a part of the family portrait.
I tried to capture the kind of father Eugène was to his daughter in the painting I made one summer of the two of them in the garden at le Mesnil. Eugène, in his summer hat, was reading to little Julie as she sat watching her red toy boat drift around a small pond. The boat—the center of the composition—was for my enjoyment, reminding me of the boats of Lorient, Cherbourg, the Isle of Wight, Nice. My little family was the calm in a whirling composition, cocooned in a circle of green and yellow leaves dappled with white light.
Berthe and Julie were inseparable. Berthe taught her daughter the alphabet, using a book she illustrated. They often drew or painted side by side. Here’s an unfinished study of a drawing lesson.
After Eugene Manet’s death, Berthe created a series of portraits of Julie grieving for her father. These works coincided with Berthe’s return to Renaissance painting techniques—rich hues and long brushstrokes that were perfect for portraying the willowy young woman that fourteen-year-old Julie had become.
Laërtes sat with me during hours of mourning, silent except for an occasional shivering sigh.
Berthe Morisot’s death, when Julie was just sixteen, marked the end of her series of loving portraits.