Berthe Morisot face swap

Where this one comes from

Manet painted Berthe Morisot in 1872, one of eleven times he painted her over six years. She was a serious painter herself, exhibited in the first Impressionist show of 1874, and two years after this she married his brother Eugène. The picture stayed in the family for a century and is now in the Musée d’Orsay. She kept it hanging in her own house.

What is in the picture

Black hat, black ribbon, black jacket, dark hair, and a small bunch of violets at the collar that is the only colour above the waist. The background is a flat pale grey. Manet’s blacks are the famous thing — not one black but half a dozen, warm and cool, laid against each other so that the picture never goes dead — and in the middle of them a very pale face is looking straight out with no expression it is willing to explain.

When people use it

For a look that ends the conversation. It is the most directly confrontational face in this catalogue and works for any reply that does not need words.

How your face lands in it

A frontal head on a pale ground, lit evenly, with the dark hat framing the top and the eyes doing everything. Simple to land and strong in effect. The original is loosely brushed everywhere except the eyes, so a photograph that is sharp where it matters is enough; the rest is the painting’s problem.

Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets — Édouard Manet, 1872. Édouard Manet died in 1883, so the painting has been in the public domain for well over a century in France and the United States alike. Source

Also in: Paintings · Oil portraits