The Artist's Sister, Edma, with Her Daughter, Jeanne

Executed in 1872 in watercolor and now in the National Gallery of Art, this work shows Morisot's sister Edma with her young daughter Jeanne — a tender double portrait in a medium Morisot used throughout her career alongside oil paint and pastel. Watercolor's transparency and speed suited her interest in capturing spontaneous, intimate moments, and her watercolors share the looseness and psychological directness of her oils. The mother-child theme here carries particular resonance given Edma's recent marriage and motherhood.

Watercolor allows Morisot to work with even greater transparency and speed than oil, the washes building form through accumulated translucent layers rather than opaque modeling. The figures are delicately suggested through warm flesh tones and pale clothing washes, the background left largely unmarked to focus attention on the intimate grouping.