Louise Riesener

The young woman here is Louise Riesener, daughter of the painter Leon Riesener and part of the artistic Paris that Berthe Morisot moved in. By 1888 Morisot was the established woman at the centre of the Impressionists, having shown with them since their very first exhibition and married into the Manet family. She paints Louise seated on a daybed, hands loosely crossed near a white rose, the whole surface worked in the quick, open brushstrokes that were her signature. Nothing is tightly finished. Louise lived until 1944, and the portrait stayed in her family for decades before it passed to the French state.