Study for “Young Girl in a Green Coat”

• Berthe Morisot (1841–1895)
• ca. 1894
• Pencil on polished bu laid paper
• Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
• (1975.1.674)

Born into an affluent bourgeois family, Berthe Morisot defied social conventions of her time by pursuing a career as a painter. She often depicted women’s daily lives in domestic settings and showed a refined sensitivity to fashion—as an artist, as a consumer, and as a marker of modernity. This drawing was made in preparation for a portrait of a woman in a vivid green coat. The quick, zigzag pencil strokes are reminiscent of Morisot’s distinctive brushwork.