Young Girl Holding a Basket
1891
Medium
Pastel on pink laid paper with red fibrous inclusions (pieced at bottom), stretched and edge mounted on a honeycomb paper panel
Dimensions
45.9 × 83.8 cm (18 1/8 × 33 in.)
Classification
prints and drawing
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
186319
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This large-scale drawing is a study for the painting The Cherry Tree (1891, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris). The model is Berthe Morisot’s niece, Jeanne Gobillard, who lifts a basket to gather fruit. The light passages of yellow pastel suggest patches of sunlight reflecting off her hat, hair, and dress. The pink paper Morisot used adds additional luminosity to this outdoor scene.
About the Artist
Berthe Morisot · 1841–1895
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was a founding member of the Impressionist movement and one of the most significant women artists of the 19th century. Born into an affluent bourgeois family in Bourges, France—her mother was a great-niece of the Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard—Morisot received serious artistic training despite the social constraints facing women of her class. Under the guidance of...