Berthe Morisot (French, 1841–1895) - Tête de Bébé en Bonnet (Head of a Child, the Artist’s daughter, Julie Manet)

Stamped with Artist's signature at bottom left ‘Berthe Morisot’, pastel on blue paper 
Sheet size: 11 x 13 ¾ in. (27.9 x 34.9cm)
Executed in 1878. 

Provenance

Collection of Julie Manet Rouart (1878-1966), the Artist's daughter, Paris.
Charles E. Slatkin Galleries, Inc., New York (by 1960).
Acquired directly from the above in 1972.
Private Collection, Pennsylvania. 

Exhibition

“Berthe Morisot: Drawings, Pastels & Watercolors,” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, October 10-November 8, 1960.
Charles E. Slatkin Galleries, New York, November 12-December 10, 1960.
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, December 20-January 18, 1961.
Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 25-February 23, 1961.
Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, January 1968.

Literature

Marie Louise Bataille and Georges Wildenstein, Berthe Morisot, Catalogue des Peintures, Pastels, et Aquarelles, Paris, 1961, p. 52, no. 445, illustrated as fig. 427.

Lot Essay

In a 1879 letter Morisot wrote to her sister Edma Morisot Pontillon:

"Julie is like a big inflated balloon; she has been baptized (this will come as a great shock to some people) and vaccinated. Two necessary chores are thus behind me... My daughter is a Manet to her fingers; even, at this early date she is like her uncles, she has nothing of me." Rouart, Denis, ed. The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot. Translated by Betty W. Hubbard. New York, 1959, p. 101.

Morisot married Édouard Manet's younger brother, Eugène Manet, who was an amateur painter. Their daughter was Julie Manet. Julie is the subject for about one-third of Morisot's paintings. 

Footnotes

Morisot’s first portrait of her daughter, Julie Manet (November 14, 1878 - November 21, 1966)