Edouard Manet painted this portrait of Berthe Morisot on his return with his family after travelling in order to help clear his mind after the horrors of the Franco-Prussian War and the siege of Paris.
It has often been suggested that Manet had an affair with his model. There is no evidence of this, and it is so easy to invent the lives of the dead. Apart from the fact that he was married, which might not have been an obstacle, she was a member of the haute bourgeoisie, and would almost certainly have been chaperoned. It is known, for example, that she attended none of the gatherings of her fellow painters in the cafés of Paris.
He painted her fourteen times in all, and this is my favourite portrait of her. Manet used black to great effect, and in this painting he even showed her eyes as black, although in life they were green. His paintings have not degraded, probably because he mixed the colour by a combination of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue, instead of bitumen or lamp black.
Berthe married Manet’s brother Eugène in 1874, at the age of thirty three.
After completing the portrait, Manet presented her with a painting of the bouquet, with “A Mlle Berthe Morisot… E Manet” on the letter.
Art in the Nineteenth Century 