Young Girl in a Ball Gown

Morisot painted this young woman dressed for an evening out in 1879 and showed it the next year at the fifth Impressionist exhibition, where the critic Charles Ephrussi wrote admiringly of her work. Look closely and the flowers behind the sitter and the trimmings on her gown barely hold their shape, dissolving into quick strokes of color that were exactly what some viewers found unfinished and others found alive. Morisot was the only woman among the founding Impressionists and took part in almost every one of their shows. She sold this picture straight to a fellow painter, and it later belonged to the critic Theodore Duret, who was persuaded by the poet Stephane Mallarme, a close friend of Morisot, to let the French State buy it in 1894.