The Cherry Picker (Le Cerisier)

Two figures reach upwards through a narrow column of leaves, light and pale clothing. One stands on a ladder, stretching towards the cherries overhead; the other raises a basket from below. Their actions meet halfway up the canvas. In The Cherry Picker, also known by its French title Le Cerisier—The Cherry Tree—Berthe Morisot turns an ordinary garden activity into an unusually ambitious figure painting. Its height, 154 centimetres, gives the familiar task a scale that a small reproduction can easily conceal.^[1]

The picture grew out of sittings at Mézy in 1891, but Morisot continued working on it in Paris and finished it in 1893. Her daughter Julie supplied the original pose on the ladder, while her niece Jeannie Gobillard held the basket. A professional model later took Julie’s place during the painting’s development. Its impression of a moment outdoors emerged through sustained preparation, repeated poses and changes of setting.^[1]

How the two figures organise the painting

The tall format makes the act of reaching the picture’s central event. The figure on the ladder occupies most of the upper and middle right, her long pale dress extending almost the full distance from the basket to the lower rungs. Her raised arm carries the eye towards the upper-right corner. Across from her, the broad hat of the lower figure creates a conspicuous rounded shape. From that hat, the eye follows another lifted arm to the basket. These two upward movements turn a practical exchange into the framework of the composition.

The ladder supplies a second, more angular structure. Its sloping sides cut across the vegetation, while the rungs interrupt the flow of the dress and foliage. Morisot makes the apparatus readable without giving each piece of wood an equally sharp edge. Darker passages around and beneath the ladder help the pale figure stand forward. The support is indispensable to the action, but it also connects the upper branches with the densely painted ground.

The basket sits at the meeting point of the figures. Its curved handle repeats the rounded forms of the hat and branches, while its warm brown colour provides a small concentration of solidity among flickering strokes. The helper’s raised hand makes the basket feel held rather than suspended as an isolated still-life object. Our attention travels through the relationship between hands, fruit and container before we begin to explore the surrounding garden.

Neither figure addresses the spectator. The lower figure turns her back, and the upper one looks towards the tree. This absorption allows us to follow the activity without an answering gaze. Yet the picture withholds a broad view of the garden. There is no expansive horizon to tell us exactly how the grounds extend beyond the frame. Branches, clothing and ladder fill the canvas closely, making the scene feel simultaneously open to the sky and enclosed by vegetation.

The title’s singular “picker” can therefore be slightly misleading if it makes us overlook the person below. Morisot has built a composition around cooperation. The figure who gathers the cherries and the figure who receives them create one continuous action, and the painting would lose much of its balance if either were removed.

From a garden at Mézy to a Paris studio

The Musée Marmottan Monet locates the first sittings at the family’s Maison Blotière in Mézy. Julie posed on the ladder during the cherry harvest, assisted by her cousin Jeannie Gobillard. Morisot made a small painted sketch and preparatory drawings from these sessions before returning to the subject in Paris. The museum identifies the later model as Jeanne Fourmanoir, who replaced Julie when her daughter was insufficiently available.^[1]

There are consequently two different questions behind “Who is the cherry picker?” Julie originated the pose and belongs to the subject’s family history. The developed painting also depended on Fourmanoir’s professional work. Calling the upper figure simply a portrait of Julie leaves out that second stage; calling her only Fourmanoir loses the composition’s beginning. Morisot carried an observed activity through a process in which the person posing could change while the pictorial role continued.

The names Jeanne and Jeannie can also cause confusion. Jeanne Fourmanoir was the professional model brought into the later work; Jeannie Gobillard was Morisot’s niece, associated with the basket-bearing figure. Their different contributions should remain distinct. Nothing in the visible scene identifies the figures as hired agricultural labourers. The documented starting point is members of Morisot’s family gathering fruit in their garden.^[1]

The older catalogue by Marie-Louise Bataille and Georges Wildenstein adds a useful location to the making history. Its entry for the Marmottan composition says that Morisot began it in her Mézy studio and completed it in the rue de Villejust. The same entry records the substitution of Fourmanoir for Julie.^[10] This does not require us to choose between an outdoor origin and studio work. The garden supplied the motif and initial sittings; the development of the large canvas crossed between spaces.

That sequence changes the significance of its lively surface. The leaves may suggest a breeze and the bodies a brief pause in movement, but their appearance does not date every brushstroke to a single summer afternoon. Morisot could preserve the sensation of an outdoor encounter while revisiting its structure over a much longer period. The finished picture offers the experience of looking up into a tree, shaped through sustained studio work.

A subject worked out in many studies

The preparation for Le Cerisier was unusually extensive. In its record for a surviving watercolour, the Morgan Library & Museum states that more studies survive for this composition than for any other Morisot painting. That assessment helps explain the owning museum’s description of the project’s exceptional ambition. The Morgan sheet, inventory 2004.27, is watercolour over pencil on cream wove paper and measures 443 × 275 millimetres. It is one of two watercolour studies identified by the museum.^[11]

The 1961 catalogue makes the breadth of this work especially clear. Under its entry 275, it lists related oils, three pastels, two watercolours and numerous drawings in pencil, coloured pencil, blue pencil and sanguine. Sanguine is a reddish drawing material whose colour can give the human figure warmth even in a study without painted flesh tones. The catalogue identifies studies of the figure picking cherries, studies of Jeannie extending the basket, and a study of hands.^[10]

These records show how Morisot divided the problem. She could consider the whole arrangement in one sheet, isolate the basket-bearing gesture in another, and examine the hands separately. Hands matter particularly in this composition because the activity depends on their connection: one reaches into the tree, another holds the container. A slight alteration to their height or direction could change the relationship between the figures and the surrounding branches.

The surviving studies also caution against treating drawing as merely a preliminary outline abandoned when painting began. Here, the range of materials offered different ways to think. A pencil could establish a pose or contour; coloured materials could test relationships between figure and setting. The catalogue records multiple investigations rather than one inevitable progression from a first sketch to a final answer. Its long list cannot establish the exact order in which every sheet was made, but it shows that Morisot returned repeatedly to particular parts of the subject.

The appearance of ease in the large painting becomes more interesting in this light. Its gestures feel continuous, though they were studied separately; its colours seem to belong to one passing atmosphere, though the project extended across years. Preparation and freshness work together. The drawings help us understand how much thought could lie behind an image that remains supple and alive.

Which version is the Marmottan painting?

Morisot made several related oils, and their shared title can obscure important differences. Bataille and Wildenstein catalogue a small Le Cerisier as number 274, the tall canvas discussed here as number 275, and another large treatment as number 276. Their measurements distinguish the objects: the small painting is 55 × 33 centimetres, while number 276 is recorded as 136 × 89 centimetres. The current Marmottan record gives its own painting as 154 × 84 centimetres.^[1][10]

The museum describes two large versions and regards its canvas as the more fully achieved. The Morgan’s count of three oil versions includes the small canvas alongside the two large ones.^[1][11] The two descriptions are therefore compatible: they are counting different groups within the same undertaking. A search result headed The Cherry Tree may refer to any of these related paintings or to a work on paper.

There is also a separate oil study of a girl gathering cherries, catalogued as number 277 in 1961. It measures 85 × 53 centimetres, and the catalogue identifies Julie as its model.^[10] That more concentrated study should not be confused with the complete two-figure arrangement. The distinction is useful when comparing reproductions: a shared action or sitter does not make two images the same object.

For the present painting, the most dependable identifiers are the Marmottan inventory number 6020, its tall two-figure composition and its current measurements. The older catalogue gives its width as 85 centimetres; the museum’s current 84-centimetre figure takes precedence. Historical catalogue numbers remain valuable for following related works, but they need to be read alongside the present owning record.^[1][10]

Pale dresses, coloured light and firm structure

Colour prevents the white dresses from becoming blank areas. In the upper figure’s clothing, pale blue and lilac strokes suggest folds and reflected light. Warmer pinks run through the bodice and sleeve. The lower figure’s dress gathers yellow, green and reddish passages from the surrounding colour world. The garments distinguish the bodies from the garden while also bringing the garden’s colours into them.

This exchange is particularly visible around the raised arms. Warm skin passes close to green branches, and the edges vary in emphasis. Some contours guide the eye firmly; elsewhere a transition is carried by adjacent strokes rather than a continuous enclosing line. Morisot gives the figures enough definition to sustain the action without separating them from the air and foliage around them.

The background is equally active. Small red cherries punctuate greens and blue, but Morisot does not count out each leaf or fruit with botanical consistency. Sweeps and shorter marks vary in direction, producing an impression of branches crossing and light passing between them. Against this movement, the long dress and ladder give the eye durable lines to follow. The picture’s energy depends on the conversation between those stable structures and its restless surface.

The preparatory pastels belong to a broader development in Morisot’s practice. The Marmottan’s 2023 exhibition dossier explains that, from 1885, she increasingly used pastel to organise future compositions and establish colour harmonies. The curators connect that practice with her study of eighteenth-century artists and argue that preparation could free the later brushwork, producing an impression of spontaneity.^[12] Le Cerisier offers a particularly substantial example of a late project supported by work in several media.

The Musée d’Orsay’s 2019 exhibition texts likewise emphasise that Morisot’s visible working marks and sketch-like handling could form part of a determined artistic choice. They describe a continuing investigation of finish rather than a simple inability to complete a painting.^[13] Here, the documented completion after prolonged work makes that distinction especially useful. The mobile brushwork is part of what the completed canvas does: it keeps figures and vegetation responsive to one another.

An ambitious painting seen after Morisot’s death

According to the Marmottan, Morisot considered submitting the painting to the Salon du Champ-de-Mars following Renoir’s advice, then abandoned the idea. The museum presents this as a reported possibility, so it should not be treated as proof of a completed submission or rejection. What is documented in its account is that the painting was first shown publicly in the 1896 retrospective at Durand-Ruel, the year after Morisot’s death.^[1]

The original exhibition catalogue places Le Cerisier (1891) at number 2, followed immediately by a study of the same subject at number 3. Elsewhere it lists another Le Cerisier, figures for the composition among the pastels and drawings, and a watercolour under the same title.^[14] Visitors could encounter the undertaking through more than the large finished image. The exhibition’s contents made room for the separate investigations that had helped bring it into being.

The 1961 catalogue connects the Marmottan composition with that 1896 number 2 and records its later exhibition history, including the Salon d’Automne of 1907, London in 1950 and exhibitions in Canada and the United States in 1952–54.^[10] These entries trace its continuing public life before its arrival at the Marmottan through Annie Rouart’s 1993 bequest.^[1]

Its scale is an essential part of that public presence. On the wall, the two figures occupy a tall surface that asks viewers to move their attention upwards, following the same direction as the reaching bodies. A family garden subject acquires the weight of a major composition through format, preparation and the sustained relationship between its figures. The cherries are the task that brings them together; the larger subject is the way bodies, colour and vegetation can be made to share one animated space.