Berthe Morisot and Her Daughter Julie Manet

When Renoir arranged this double portrait in 1894, he and Berthe Morisot had been friends and fellow Impressionists for 20 years. She was one of the few women in that circle, and by now a widow: her husband Eugene Manet, a brother of the painter Edouard Manet, had died two years before. Renoir had first meant to paint the daughter, Julie, on her own, then wrote to Morisot asking to paint mother and child together instead. The timing gives the picture its quiet weight. Morisot died the following spring, in 1895, and the orphaned Julie, aged 16, was left in the care of two of her mother's friends, Renoir himself and the poet Stephane Mallarme.