Edma Morisot painted this portrait of her younger sister when Berthe was 24. Berthe had just had her first public success as an artist the year previously, when two of her pieces were accepted into the annual Salon de Paris. The sisters were raised in a cultured and prosperous French family and at that time painting was one of the accomplishments deemed necessary to the complete education of a young lady. However, this principle ran a bit amok in the Morisot household, where rather than simply a polite accomplishment painting became a career choice. In this, unusually, they were supported and encouraged by their parents. The Morisot family were said to be related to the Ancien Régime painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard and perhaps the Morisot parents simply assumed that "blood will out." (http://womenintheactofpainting.blogspot.nl/2012/11/edma-and-berthe.html)