Berthe Morisot with a fan

1874 was the year everything shifted for Berthe Morisot. That spring she showed her work in the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris, the group's opening act, while Manet, who painted her here, kept his distance from it. Her father had died that same year, which is why she sits in black. And that December she married Manet's younger brother Eugene. This is the twelfth portrait Manet made of her over six years, and the last: once she was his sister-in-law she never posed for him again. Look at the hand holding the flowered fan and you can find the ring. Behind her, the leafy panel nods to the Japanese prints then flooding into Paris and turning up in half the studios in the city.