Descendance de l’artiste

Galerie Jean-Claude & Jacques Bellier, Paris

Collection particulière

Custot Gallery Limited, Londres

Acquis auprès de cette dernière par l'actuel propriétaire le 26 mars 2010

Collection Louis Grandchamp des Raux

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Berthe Morisot (Madame Eugène Manet), avec portrait photogravé d’après Édouard Manet, Préface par Stéphane Mallarmé, Exposition de son oeuvre, mars 1896, n°214, p.32

Paris, Galerie Jean-Claude & Jacques Bellier, D’Ingres à nos jours, 1960, n°58, p.15 (selon une étiquette au dos, titré Jeune femme aux champs)

Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, Berthe Morisot, 1961, n°110 (selon une étiquette au dos, titré et annoté Jeune femme aux champs dans les vignes / Pastel d’Alayer). 

M. Angoulvent, Berthe Morisot, Editions Albert Morancé, Paris,1933, n°144, p.124

M.-L. Bataille, G. Wildenstein, Berthe Morisot, Catalogue des peintures, pastels et aquarelles, Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1961, n° 464, fig. 454, reproduit en noir et blanc p. 53

La Gazette Drouot, n°19, 16 mai 2008, reproduit p.23

Berthe Morisot, sister-in-law of Edouard Manet, was, with American Mary Cassatt and French Eva Gonzales, the most important woman painter of the Impressionist movement. Created in 1882, this pastel belongs to one of the artist’s most fertile periods, the same year as the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition, where the critics hailed her as the “impressionniste par excellence”.

In this exhibition that took place in the month of April, Morisot exhibited nine works, three of them landscapes in pastel. That same year, she spent much of the year in Bougival (ill. 4), where between 1881 and 1884 she rented a country house every summer with her husband and daughter (ill. 2 and 3). It was there, while dividing her time between painting and family life, that she found an inexhaustible source of inspiration. The property, with its vast Flower-filled garden, became the setting for numerous plein air studies. A watercolour also entitled Dans les Vignes, dated from 1881 and inscribed on the reverse ’Bougival’, allows us to situate this pastel in the same setting (ill. 1). Unlike the watercolour, which depicts several women working amongst the vines, our work focuses on a single female figure. With her blue and white clothing and red headdress, the young woman stands out against the surrounding foliage. The luminous vibrancy of the colour palette and the fluidity of the brushstrokes enliven the surface and melt the forms into a harmonious blend of colour.

While most female artists at the time devoted themselves to floral still lifes or watercolour landscapes, Berthe Morisot focused her work on the female figure, often inspired by those around her: family members, neighbours or servants.

This young woman in the vineyards embodies modern femininity, the central theme of her work. In 1896, Dans les Vignes was among the works selected for Berthe Morisot’s posthumous retrospective, organised at the Durand-Ruel gallery, a year after her death. It was Stéphane Mallarmé, the artist’s loyal friend and admirer, who wrote the preface to the exhibition catalogue.

Fig. 1 : Berthe Morisot, Dans les vignes (Bougival), 1881, aquarelle sur papier

Fig. 2 : Berthe Morisot, Eugène Manet et sa fille dans le jardin de Bougival, 1881, huile sur toile, Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris

Fig. 3 : Berthe Morisot, Le jardin à Bougival, 1884, huile sur toile, Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris

Fig. 4 : Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Le déjeuner des canotiers, 1880-1881, huile sur toile, Philipps Collection, Washington