In the spring of 1870, Berthe Morisot was fretting over one of her submissions to that year’s Paris Salon. Still in her twenties, Morisot was a respected painter, best known for her landscapes, and had been tutored by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, the influential Barbizon school painter of fluttery fields and woodlands. She had shown in all but one of the previous six Salons, but the new work was a departure—a double portrait of her beloved sister Edma and their mother, seated together while Mme Morisot reads. On the advice of the painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Morisot had reworked her mother’s head but was still dissatisfied. Seeking another set of eyes, she turned to Édouard Manet. He and Morisot had become friends—their families ran in the same circles, and she had served as a model (clothes on, with her mother in attendance) for his enigmatic set piece The Balcony (1868–1869).…