There are so many affecting things about Manet’s portrait of his sister-in-law, painter Berthe Morisot, begun in 1869. It's winter. Morisot is wearing a fur coat and muff and a violet hat of velvet trimmed with grey plumes. Manet painted her 11 times over many seasons and with many hats. He was fashionable and so was she. He was famously popular with the ladies and is the one who introduced her to his brother.

She was a supposed great-niece of Fragonard's so painting was already in the family. They met copying paintings at the Louvre. But Morisot in fact was the one who introduced Manet to Degas, Monet, Renoir and Cezanne among others in her circle. Her plein air painting had a great influence on him.

At the time of the portrait, Morisot was still mostly working in watercolors. But at the age of 23 she was accepted at the career defining Salon in 1864. Yet there is a certain tentativeness, an almost nervous energy one can still see five years later. Morisot had trouble convincing her parents to let her pursue a serious career.

Violet was a color Manet associated with her. The touches of violet become still more pronounced in a well loved later painting he did of her with a bouquet of violets after her father had died. Though this portrait is a lot tamer than the Dejeuner sur L'Herbe or the Olympia which had made his reputation, it still has the intensity of that work. It has a dynamic, fleeting quality that was certainly impressionistic, yet had hallmarks of his signature style where figures emerged from the black. He kept this portrait throughout his life.