Description
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.
Provenance
Estate of the artist [stamp (Lugt 1826) recto, lower right, in black]; J. M. Rouart, Paris; sold, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, Feb. 23, 1954, lot 46. Sold, Sotheby’s, London, Mar. 27, 1985, lot 317, to Dorothy Braude Edinburg, Brookline, MA.; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013.
Accession Number
186319
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
Credit Line
Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
Background & Context
Background Story
"Young Girl Holding a Basket" is an 1891 pastel on pink laid paper with red fibrous inclusions by Berthe Morisot that captures the French Impressionist painter in her most tenderly observational and coloristically refined mode, the image showing a young girl with a basket rendered with the same attention to feminine grace and domestic intimacy that characterized her entire oeuvre. The composition is a large work—45.9 × 83.8 centimeters—showing a girl holding a basket with the pastel on pink paper creating a surface of extraordinary softness and chromatic warmth. The pink laid paper with red fibrous inclusions provides a warm, sympathetic ground that makes the pastel strokes appear rich and luminous, enhancing the sense of youthful innocence and feminine gentleness. The 1891 date places this work in the period of Morisot's mature Impressionist production and her continued engagement with the theme of childhood and domesticity. Art historians have connected this work to the broader tradition of the child portrait in French art, from the paintings of Renoir to the pastels of the period, noting that Morisot's treatment is more focused on the feminine tenderness and the coloristic warmth, the transformation of observed childhood into visual gentleness, than the psychological penetration or the social commentary of these other traditions.
Cultural Impact
This 1891 pastel made girl basket tenderly refined through large 45cm pink-laid-paper red-fiber warmth and pastel soft luminous gentleness, using mature Impressionist production to transform observed childhood into feminine visual tenderness beyond Renoir psychological social commentary.
Why It Matters
It matters because Morisot drew a girl with a basket and made the paper feel like it was holding a moment of childhood that never wanted to end—proving that even a basket could be a cradle if the pastel was gentle enough.
