Girl on a Divan

Around 1884 Berthe Morisot moved into the first two floors of a newly built house at 40 rue de Villejust in Paris and painted in its salon. That is almost certainly where this young woman sits, since the patterned cover of the divan turns up in other pictures made in that room. In 1969 the painter's grandson, Denis Rouart, repeated what his mother Julie had told him. The sitter was a model who posed now and then for payment, not a relative or friend, and nobody in the family knew her name. The canvas stayed with the artist all her life, and the signature in the corner is a studio stamp her daughter added. The silver earrings set with pearls are painted so lightly they seem to flicker. The writer Paul Valéry also lived in the building, and the street now carries his name.