Madame Théodore Gobillard (Yves Morisot)

Madame Théodore Gobillard (Yves Morisot) by Edgar Degas, created in 1869, is a remarkable early example of the artist’s mastery of the portrait genre. This intimate drawing, classified as a drawing despite its vibrant color, utilizes pastel on paper, a medium Degas frequently returned to for its immediate and delicate qualities. The sitter, Yves Morisot, was the sister of artist Berthe Morisot and was married to the painter Théodore Gobillard, placing the work firmly within Degas’s artistic and social circle among the Parisian avant-garde.

The piece presents Yves Morisot in a striking profile, a compositional choice Degas favored throughout his career for its capacity to reveal character while maintaining formal distance. The rich application of pastel highlights the contours of the woman’s face and elaborate hairstyle, reflecting the fashion and precision of the late 1860s. Unlike the more dynamic scenes of dancers and bathers he would later become famous for, this portrait focuses on stillness and intense observation, defining the sitter against a neutral background.

Degas's use of line and color demonstrates the influence of both classical draftsmanship and the emerging Impressionist sensibility regarding light and atmosphere. The work offers valuable insight into the artistic relationships and intellectual ferment of the period just prior to the formal establishment of the Impressionist group. This significant depiction of one of the key women connected to the movement is housed in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it is often studied for its technical brilliance and historical context. High-quality images and prints of this seminal work are widely distributed, available frequently through the museum’s public domain initiatives.