Portrait of Berthe Morisot
Marcellin Desboutin French
Sitter Berthe Morisot French
Not on view
Desboutin and Berthe Morisot both participated in the second Impressionist exhibition in the spring of 1876, though they almost certainly met earlier through their mutual friends Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas. In this print, Desboutin demonstrates the range of tones achievable in his preferred medium of drypoint—a technique in which the artist scratches the copperplate directly with a sharp needle. He juxtaposed the highly worked, rich blacks of Morisot’s dress, hair, and eyes with the faint outline of her armchair and the fashionable Japanese fan in her hands.
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