Jules Strauss, Paris (and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 3, 1902, lot 44)
Jacques-Émile Blanche, Paris (acquired by 1939)
Sir Hugh Walpole, London (acquired by 1945)
Lord Harvey of Tasburgh, London
Sale: Sotheby's, London, June 23, 1965, lot 45
Frieda Kittay Goldsmith, Palm Beach (acquired at the above sale)
Private Collection (acquired from the above and sold: Christie's, New York, November 7, 2007, lot 370)
Acquired at the above sale

London, Leicester Galleries, Jacques-Emile Blanche, His Art and His Collection, 1939, no. 66
London, Leicester Galleries, The Art Collection of the Late Sir Hugh Walpole, 1945, no. 111
London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Berthe Morisot, an Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, 1950, no. 24
London, Wildenstein & Co., Loan Exhibition of Paintings: Berthe Morisot, 1961, no. 22, illustrated in the catalogue
Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, Berthe Morisot, 1961, no. 34
London, Wildenstein & Co., The French Impressionists and Some of their Contemporaries, 1963, no. 48

Marie-Louise Bataille & Georges Wildenstein, Berthe Morisot, Catalogue des peintures, pastels et aquarelles, Paris, 1961, no. 119, illustrated fig. 147
Alain Clairet, Delphine Montalant & Yves Rouart, Berthe Morisot, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Montolivet, 1997, no. 120, illustrated p. 172

The work is in very good condition and the canvas has been lined. The surface is very slightly dirty. The impasto has been well preserved. Under UV light: there are very small spots of retouching at each of the four extreme corners as well as at the centers of each of the four extreme outer edges.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Paysage was painted in Bougival, where Morisot and her family spent their summers in the early 1880s. "Bougival, a bathing place on the Seine where Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro had painted before the Franco-Prussian war...was only twenty minutes by train from the Gare Saint-Lazare, and had long been viewed as an artists' colony. For Morisot, it combined the advantage of accessibility with the attractions of the landscape and of the large garden of the rented house" (Kathleen Adler & Tamar Garb, Berthe Morisot, Oxford, 1987, p. 121).

Although Morisot willingly and, by all accounts, very graciously fulfilled the social and familial obligations expected of a woman of station in late nineteenth-century France, for the first twenty-five years of the Third Republic she persevered to produce images that focus on both her own world and subjects from modern life. Throughout her career she explored the boundaries of art, always questioning accepted practice and experimenting with a variety of ideas about color and line. Morisot's palette is comprised of soft, pearlescent colors, and she applies them to the canvas with individual strokes that mimic the effect of velvety pastels. In 1877 the critic Paul Mantz referred to Morisot as: "the one real Impressionist," whose work had, "all the frankness of an improvisation; it does truly give the idea of an 'impression' registered by a sincere eye and rendered again by a hand completely without trickery" (ibid., p. 72).  Morisot herself reflected on the process of painting and drawing: "And of what use are the rules? None at all. It is only necessary to feel and see things in a different way and where can that be learned?...The eternal question of drawing and color is futile because color is only an expression of form. You can't train a musician by scientific explanations of sound vibrations, nor the eye of a painter by explaining the relationship between line and tone" (Armand Fourreau, Berthe Morisot, Paris, 1925, p. 189).

The exceptional quality of the present work is reflected in its impressive provenance. In the late 1930s and the 1940s it was in the collection of Jacques-Émile Blanche, one of Marcel Proust's closest friends and an artist himself; later Paysage was in the collections of the celebrated British author Sir Hugh Walpole and in that of Lord Harvey of Tasburgh, who served as the British Ambassador to France from 1948 to 1954.