Young Girl with Hat
Berthe Morisot·1891
Historical Context
Young Girl with Hat belongs to the series of children's portraits and studies Morisot produced throughout the 1880s and 1890s, many featuring her daughter Julie Manet or the daughters of her friends and family circle. The hat — a crucial accessory of bourgeois feminine dress from infancy — provided Morisot with additional opportunities to explore texture, colour, and the relationship between the object and the face it frames. These works place Morisot in a long tradition of French children's portraiture but bring to it the directness and freshness of the Impressionist touch she had developed over two decades.
Technical Analysis
The hat and the face beneath it are the composition's twin foci — brim and decoration rendered in quick varied marks while the child's face receives slightly more careful attention to likeness. Pale, high-key tones throughout — cream, white, pale pink, light blue — keep the palette light and fresh.
