Morisot, Berthe (1841-1895)
La Robe Rose (The Pink Dress)
c.1870
Oil on canvas, 54.6 x 67.3 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The fashionable portraitist Jacques-Emile Blanche witnessed this painting being made at the Villa Fodor, the family home of Marguerite Carré, the sitter: “One day, she [Morisot] painted before my eyes a charming portrait of Mlle Marguerite in a light pink dress; indeed, the entire canvas was light. Here Berthe Morisot was fully herself, already eliminating from nature both shadows and half-tones.” But the painting required several sessions, since Morisot “constantly changed her mind and painted over what she had done once the session was at an end . . . .” The Pink Dress is one of the artist’s few surviving early works. (MET)