Portrait of Berthe Morisot

This print depicts the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot leaning forward in an armchair, gazing intensely out to the viewer and grasping her fan with both hands. Her dress, hair, and famously dark eyes contrast with the barely delineated uchiwa fan and armchair. Desboutin achieved this range of tones in his preferred medium, drypoint, a technique in which the artist scratches the copperplate directly with a needle. Desboutin and Morisot both participated in the second Impressionist exhibition of 1876, though they almost certainly met earlier through mutual friends Manet and Degas. Morisot holds fans in numerous portraits by Manet and received one of Degas’s early fan designs as a gift from the artist. She also tried her hand at painting fans.