The Little Girl from Nice

The Little Girl from Nice belongs to Morisot's late career subjects of children and young people in outdoor Mediterranean settings, following the time she and Eugène Manet spent in Nice and along the French Riviera in the 1880s. The sunnier, warmer palette of these southern works distinguishes them from her earlier Paris and Normandy paintings, as the Mediterranean light required a different chromatic response. Nice also gave her exposure to children slightly outside her own social world who she could observe more objectively.

A warmer, more golden palette than her Parisian subjects — southern light introduces ochres and warm pinks alongside cooler shadow blues. The child figure is loosely but expressively painted with Morisot's mature touch: the face suggested rather than minutely described.