Listen to co-curator Sarah Lees describe a portrait of Julie Manet, the daughter of Berthe Morisot.
Julie Manet (1878–1966) was eight or nine when her parents, Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet (brother of the artist Édouard Manet), commissioned Renoir to paint her portrait. He made several preparatory sketches, including one in which Julie sits in a more forward-facing pose. The strong, sharply defined contours of her face in both the sketch and the painting exemplify Renoir’s new emphasis on line and clarity in his work—a style that Morisot appreciated, although some of Renoir’s other friends criticized it, including his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.
Child with a Cat or Julie Manet, 1887
Oil on canvas
Musée d’Orsay, Paris; RF 1999 13
Musée d'Orsay, dist. GrandPalaisRmn. Photography by Patrice Schmidt.
Renoir had known Julie Manet since her birth in 1878. Her mother, Berthe Morisot, belonged to the Impressionist group, and her father, Eugène Manet, was the brother of Édouard Manet, perhaps the leading avant-garde artist of the time. This is the first of several portraits Renoir painted of Julie Manet during her childhood and youth, and to make it, he first produced five preparatory sketches, including the fairly fully-developed study in charcoal and graphite on blue paper which you can see nearby. In the final version, however, Manet took a more dynamic pose, with her shoulders turned diagonally while her head remained facing mostly forward. Many years later, Julie Manet recalled Renoir’s process of tracing his final sketch and transferring it to the canvas, a process that emphasizes the sharp, clearly-defined outlines of her face and features. Made in the same year that Renoir completed The Great Bathers, this painting similarly demonstrates his efforts to reintroduce rigorous preparatory processes and structure into his work. As a friend of the Morisot-Manet family, Renoir later offered Julie and her cousin drawing and painting lessons; having also learned from her mother, the young woman developed considerable skills as an artist. During one of many sojourns to the countryside Manet took with the Renoir family, she noted in her journal in 1895 that “Monsieur Renoir… said that I knew how to get the houses just right. Such a compliment from a great master gave me pleasure.”