Ernest Biéler · 5 min read
The memory of Manet beneath a parasol
In 1884, Biéler discovers the Manet retrospective in Paris. The following summer, he draws his sister Nathalie in Lausanne. A parasol, an armchair and a pale dress tell how an artistic encounter can continue within a family portrait.
Published on October 3, 2026
Featured on October 11, 2026
The parasol is open behind the face, like a small piece of sky one could hold. In Portrait of Nathalie Biéler, the Artist's Sister, Ernest Biéler gives a child a presence both close and luminous. The work dates from 1885, but part of its story begins the previous year in Paris. There, the young painter visits the exhibition organised after Édouard Manet's death. This encounter with paintings and pastels nourishes a portrait subsequently made in Lausanne, far from the Paris museum.
Biéler has been training in Paris since 1880. The MCBA reports the importance of the 1884 retrospective for his interest in lighter painting. It also highlights connections between Nathalie's portrait and In the Conservatory, Manet's work of 1879. This link does not mean that the painter's sister played a borrowed character or that her pose was imposed according to a known account. It allows us to recognise the circulation of certain devices: close framing, a seat, a parasol and particular attention to the hands.
Looking at the work — The MCBA reproduction shows Nathalie seated, wearing a pale hat, before a light-blue parasol. A white dress descends to the bottom of the paper. A red touch near her neck answers another in her hands, while pink flowers appear in the foliage on the right. The warmer-coloured chair back remains partly visible behind the child. The parasol is cut off by the framing. The whole brings face and hands closer without providing a complete view of the place where the portrait was posed.
The dimensions, sixty-five by eighty-one centimetres, allow the portrait to go beyond a simple private sketch. Its technique combines pencil, pastel, watercolour and gouache on paper subsequently mounted on canvas. This combination invites us to see the work as a meeting of drawing and painting. Some forms are guided by line, others by a coloured surface or lightening. The image does not ask us to choose between a portrait's precision and the softness of materials: it relies on their relationships to make Nathalie appear clearly.
The professional context adds a concrete concern to this family image. According to the museum entry, Biéler then hopes to secure portrait commissions to improve a difficult financial situation. Painting his sister can thus belong both to an intimate circle and to the search for a livelihood. We do not know whether this particular work was conceived as a demonstration for a future client. We need not suppose so: the quality of an intimate portrait can already show what a young artist can make of a familiar presence.
The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland situates his training between Paris and his first stays in Savièse. This trajectory gives the portrait a specific moment, that of an artist whose language is still developing. Nathalie is not an abstract example of this evolution. Her face and gaze let us encounter this work through a person. The memory of Manet is recognisable in the construction, but the relationship with the model belongs to this particular image. Influence becomes interesting when it helps see someone differently rather than repeat a famous model.
The parasol plays an essential role in this transformation. It separates the head from the foliage and enlarges the pale area around the hat. The framing cuts it off, so the object seems to continue beyond the image. We can read a balance between protection and openness: the face finds a welcoming background, while colours circulate towards the garden and chair. This is a visual reading, without attributing an attested symbol to the painter. It shows how a concrete accessory can contribute more surely to a model's presence than an extensively described setting.
The portrait enters the MCBA in 1983. Nearly a century after its creation, it preserves this double closeness: a sister observed by her brother and a young artist returning from an encounter with another's painting. We do not have the words exchanged around the work, but can follow what its forms have preserved. The pale parasol carries a memory of Paris into an image made in Lausanne. Nathalie does not disappear into this story of influence: she is the one looking at us, giving it a singular life.
