Focus on Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets and analyze the Reception.
The work was quickly considered a masterpiece of Manet's work.  It was praised by Paul Valéry in the catalogue of Manet's retrospective at the Orangerie in 1932 for the centenary of his birth.  Valéry knew the painting well: he was married to Morisot's niece, Jeannie Gobillard, the daughter of Morisot's sister Yves and her husband Theodore Gobillard, and so he also related by marriage to Manet; indeed, his wedding in 1900 was a double celebration at the same time as the marriage of Morisot's daughter Julie Manet to Ernest Rouart.  Valéry compared Manet's painting to Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring: "I do not rank anything in Manet's work higher than a certain portrait of Berthe Morisot dated 1872".
Manet sold or gave the painting to collector and art critic Théodore Duret. Morisot herself acquired the painting in 1894, paying 5,100 francs in the sale of Duret's collection. After her death in 1895, it was kept by her daughter Julie until her own death in 1966, and then it was in the collection of her son (Morisot's grandson) Clément Rouart. It was acquired for the Musée d'Orsay in 1998, with funding from the Fonds du Patrimoine, the Meyer Foundation, the China Times Group and a sponsorship programme coordinated by the Japanese The Nikkei newspaper.
Musée d'Orsay Berthe Morisot Paul Valéry Girl with a Pearl Earring Julie Manet Théodore Duret Morisot Vermeer Ernest Rouart Orangerie China Times