Drawings

A young performer raises her arms above a fine, curving rope. White strokes catch her costume; pink and red marks describe the legs; blue hatching makes the space around her tremble. Berthe Morisot's Tightrope Dancer (Danseuse de corde, 1886) makes colour and line work together throughout the image. It is a pastel on paper, measuring 60.9 × 46 cm.^[1] The figure's precarious balance is made from marks that remain visibly separate, while the surrounding paper contributes to the light.

This is one entrance into a varied body of work. Morisot drew with graphite and coloured pencils, worked with pastel, and combined pencil with watercolour. Her sheets include portraits, observations of everyday activity and studies for ambitious paintings. Looking across these different materials reveals how she arranged a figure, tested a colour relationship and decided which parts of an image needed the greatest attention.

A Tightrope Dancer Made from Coloured Marks

The dancer holds her arms unevenly, with her head turned and one foot following the other along the rope. The frontal body gives the composition its central axis, but almost every other element introduces a slight displacement. The head, shoulders, hands and feet keep the pose alive through small adjustments. Around the pale costume, loose blue strokes are active enough to suggest movement without describing a fully furnished performance space.

The 1961 catalogue by Marie-Louise Bataille and Georges Wildenstein identifies the sheet as Danseuse de corde, number 504, and reproduces it as plate 55. Its entry states that Morisot made it in recollection of the Hippodrome, using the model Isabelle Lambert.^[2] That historical note changes how the image can be understood. The scene need not record an uninterrupted moment of drawing before a moving performer: remembered spectacle and a posed model could contribute to the same picture.

The rope is a particularly economical device. A slender line establishes the action and makes the viewer reconsider the body's stability. Elsewhere, the costume acquires volume through broader, brighter passages. Morisot varies the amount of description according to the task each part performs: the rope locates, the limbs balance, and the brilliant white costume concentrates the light.

What Watercolour, Pastel and Pencil Do Differently

“Drawings” is a useful heading for these works, although the materials behave very differently. Pastel is coloured powder held together with a small amount of binder. Its sticks can make sharp strokes or broad areas, and the texture of the support catches the particles. This helps explain why a pastel can combine the directness of a line with passages that look almost painted. Blending can soften a transition, while separate strokes retain their individual colour.^[3]

Watercolour uses pigment dispersed in water with a binder and applied by brush. Transparent colour allows the brightness of the underlying paper to contribute to the image. A wash can establish a broad area of light or foliage; a more concentrated stroke can pick out a dark sleeve or a window frame. The meeting of wet and dry passages also permits different kinds of edge.^[4] In Morisot's sheets, a pencil contour may remain visible beside a wash, so the viewer can follow two ways of describing the same form.

Graphite offers another range of decisions. A pointed pencil can trace a narrow contour; hatching, in which strokes accumulate alongside one another, can make tone. Broader or blended marks give softer transitions.^[5] Colour is therefore only one of the differences between a graphite study and a pastel. The pressure, width and density of a mark matter just as much. Asking how each passage was made is often more revealing than judging the whole sheet against a single standard of smoothness.

The terms laid and wove describe paper structure. Laid paper carries a pattern of closely spaced lines crossed by more widely spaced ones, left by its manufacturing screen. Wove paper has a more even structure, produced on a woven mesh.^[6] These patterns may be difficult to see in a reproduction, but the terms identify differences in the material beneath the image.

Edma on a Bench: Drawing within a Watercolour

In The Artist's Sister Edma Seated on a Bench of 1864, the tall, narrow sheet makes a darkly dressed figure the centre of a green setting. The National Gallery of Art identifies the medium as watercolour over graphite on laid paper and gives the dimensions as 24.8 × 15.1 cm.^[7] The small scale rewards close attention to the arrangement of figure, bench and trees.

Edma's face and the pale detail at her neck stand out against her hat and dress. Her gloved hands occupy a quieter passage near the middle, while the bench carries a horizontal line through the vertical composition. In the vegetation, washes overlap with wiry strokes. Some marks identify trunks and branches; others remain patches of green, allowing the woodland to cohere without making every leaf legible.

The sheet shows how far watercolour can move beyond a simple outline filled with colour. The dark dress is a mass with its own internal variations, and the surrounding green contributes to the figure's prominence. The individual study of Edma offers a closer look at this early work.

Louise Riesener: Uneven Finish as a Pictorial Choice

Mademoiselle Louise Riesener in a Hat concentrates its most elaborate passages in the face and the large black hat. Cleveland Museum of Art currently dates this pastel to about 1877–80 and identifies the support as pale blue laid paper. Louise was the daughter of the painter Léon Riesener and a close friend of Morisot. Cleveland estimates that Morisot made nearly 200 pastels, mainly portraits and figure studies brought to different degrees of finish.^[8]

Across the hat, dense black gives way to blue highlights and broken edges. Below the face, the collar is assembled from strokes whose gaps reveal the sheet. Farther down, a few lines indicate the shoulders and clothing without filling them in. These changes in density create a route for the eye: the face receives sustained attention because the surrounding passages give it room.

Cleveland notes that the paper was formerly blue. The material has changed over time. In this portrait, bare paper is an active part of the composition, but its colour today cannot simply be treated as the exact colour Morisot originally saw. The distinction matters whenever an exposed support carries so much of an image's visual effect.

Pastel and the Preparation of Paintings

Morisot's use of pastel also illuminates the making of her oils. The Musée Marmottan Monet's 2023 exhibition dossier describes 1885 as a turning point. An exhibition of French pastellists at the Galerie Georges Petit brought eighteenth-century work into view, including that of Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, whose art Morisot admired. The museum's account connects this encounter with the growing importance of pastel in her creative process.^[9]

According to the curators, Morisot increasingly used pastel to establish the compositions and colour harmonies of future paintings. Decisions made on paper helped her move freely in oil. This helps explain the apparent spontaneity of her brushwork. A quick-looking brushstroke can follow earlier thinking about the position of a head, the relationship between a dress and its surroundings, or the distribution of warm and cool colour.

The connection also helps explain why the same visual priorities recur across media. A figure may be closely described in one place and dissolve into open marks elsewhere. Colour can move between the body and its setting, loosening a firm division between them. These effects involve the image's structure as well as the speed of the hand. A pastel study can carry that thinking while offering a complete visual experience of its own.

Sewing near a Window: Pencil, Wash and Domestic Work

Cleveland's Sewing near the Window, dated about 1885, combines watercolour and graphite on a sheet measuring 28.6 × 22.9 cm. The museum identifies the sitter as Euphrasie, known as Pasie, the nanny of Morisot's daughter Julie.^[10] Her bowed head and concentrated hands place work at the centre of the image.

The dark blue clothing anchors the figure, while green washes and pale openings keep the window area light. Graphite is especially legible around the skirt, where colour gives way to long contours. The room remains spacious because the setting is suggested through a few verticals and broad, uneven passages rather than densely described furnishings.

Cleveland discusses the sheet as part of Morisot's development of a composition in which Julie was added and the scene more tightly cropped. The drawing is valuable even without reconstructing every stage of that sequence: it lets us see the worker's individual pose and the amount of surrounding space available to Morisot. The related subject of a caregiver's sewing and a child's attention is explored further in The Sewing Lesson.

Young Saint John: A Study with Its Own Presence

Young Saint John of 1890 is another pastel on pale blue laid paper in Cleveland. The museum relates it to Morisot's stay at Mézy, where she worked in an attic studio and used a village boy as a model. It identifies the sheet as one of several studies for a full-length painting of Saint John the Baptist with his cross.^[11]

Here the figure is shown from the upper body down to his hands. Warm pink touches animate the face and arms, while the loosely indicated garment receives dark diagonal accents. Blue marks gather around the head and shoulders, but the paper remains visible between them. The background is an arrangement of strokes with differing directions and densities.

The study's relationship to a larger painting is documented, yet its immediate appeal lies in the specific child before us: the turned head, parted lips and gathered hands. The religious identity provides a destination for the project, while the pastel records the concentrated work of making a believable figure. Preparation can involve both constructing a composition and attending closely to a particular model.

Graphite Studies and the Choice of Paper

Morisot's graphite drawings extend this work of testing poses. The Musée d'Orsay holds a study for Before the Mirror, dated about 1889–90, showing a partly undressed woman seen from behind while a mirror reflects her body. The medium is graphite on tracing paper, and the sheet measures 30.5 × 20.7 cm.^[12] The choice of a translucent support is worth noticing, although that fact alone does not establish precisely how Morisot used or transferred the design.

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Study for Young Girl in a Green Coat, about 1894, is pencil on polished buff laid paper. The museum identifies it as one of three preparatory studies for the large oil of the same title.^[13] This documented sequence makes a useful comparison with the pastel studies: Morisot could investigate a painting through a drawing that did not reproduce its colour.

Different supports belong to the story of these objects. A translucent sheet, a buff sheet and a formerly blue pastel paper offer different starting conditions. Their surviving records encourage a more precise vocabulary than “a pencil sketch.” They also caution against assuming that a drawing's small size or economical marks disclose its whole purpose. Some relationships to paintings are known; others remain open.

Julie Reading and Drawing

Detroit Institute of Arts holds Julie Reading, about 1889, in graphite pencil on tan paper. Its dimensions, 22.9 × 17.3 cm, place it among Morisot's compact figure drawings.^[14] The subject belongs to an activity Morisot repeatedly found worth studying: a person absorbed in something immediately before her. The sheet also offers a straightforward example of graphite as the principal medium, rather than as an underlying framework for watercolour.

In Julie Manet Drawing of 1890, in the Musée d'Orsay collection, Morisot used blue coloured pencil on wove paper bearing a “Gerhard” watermark. The sheet measures 19.5 × 21.5 cm.^[15] Its medium is a useful reminder that a drawing in one colour need not be graphite. Blue pencil brings hue directly into line without becoming either a transparent wash or a powdery pastel passage.

Together, the titles bring reading and image-making into the same family setting. Julie appears as someone occupied with an activity, including the activity her mother practised. These sheets invite attention to concentration and gesture without requiring the viewer to invent a private conversation or an unrecorded lesson.

The Cherry Tree: A Larger Project Developed on Paper

The Morgan Library & Museum's Study for The Cherry Tree is watercolour over pencil on cream wove paper, measuring 443 × 275 mm. The museum connects it to the three painted versions Morisot made in 1891 and identifies it as one of two watercolour studies for the composition. Julie stands on a ladder picking cherries while Morisot's niece Jeannie Gobillard holds a basket below.^[16]

The relationship between the two figures gives drawing a demanding task. It must coordinate an upward reach with the receiving action below, placing bodies and objects within a shared space. The Morgan notes that more studies survive for this project than for any other Morisot painting. This makes it a particularly telling example of sustained preparation.

A work on paper can therefore be intimate in scale while contributing to an extensive undertaking. Looking from the concentrated portraits to The Cherry Tree broadens the meaning of Morisot's drawings: observation, colour planning and the organisation of a complex action all belong within the same practice.

Looking from the Marks to the Whole Image

Morisot's surviving notebooks add another scale to this picture. The 2019 Musée d'Orsay exhibition listed four books of drawings and notes, dating from 1885 through 1890, in black and coloured pencils. Their compact dimensions include a book of 15 × 8.5 cm.^[17] Alongside separate sheets and substantial pastels, they show drawing taking the form of a sequence of small pages.

When looking at an individual work, begin with the passages that seem most definite, then move outward. In Louise's portrait, that might mean following the hat into the broken marks of the collar and then the sparse shoulders. In the sewing watercolour, it means moving between the dark clothing, the graphite contours and the open window. The change in description is part of what makes the image work.

Finally, consider the whole sheet again. Exposed paper, a sketchy edge and an abbreviated setting can guide attention as firmly as a fully modelled face. The evidence of preparation helps explain how such choices developed, while close looking shows what they achieve in the surviving work. Morisot's drawings reward both approaches: the search for connections between objects and the unhurried examination of marks on paper.