Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (French:[bɛʁtmɔʁizo]; January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895) was a French painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists.
In 1864, Morisot exhibited for the first time in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris. Sponsored by the government and judged by Academicians, the Salon was the official, annual exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris. Her work was selected for exhibition in six subsequent Salons[1] until, in 1874, she joined the "rejected" Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. It was held at the studio of the photographer Nadar. Morisot went on to participate in all but one of the following eight impressionist exhibitions, between 1874 and 1886.[2]
Berthe Morisot, Portrait de Mme Morisot et de sa fille Mme Pontillon ou La lecture (The Mother and Sister of the Artist – Marie-Joséphine & Edma) 1869/70
Morisot was born January 14, 1841,[5] in Bourges, France, into an affluent bourgeois family. Her father, Edmé Tiburce Morisot, was the prefect (senior administrator) of the department of Cher. He also studied architecture at École des Beaux Arts.[6] Her mother, Marie-Joséphine-Cornélie Thomas, was the great-niece of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, one of the most prolific Rococo painters of the ancien régime.[7] She had two older sisters, Yves (1838–1893) and Edma (1839–1921), plus a younger brother, Tiburce, born in 1848. The family moved to Paris in 1852, when Morisot was a child.
It was commonplace for daughters of bourgeois families to receive art education, so Berthe and her sisters Yves and Edma were taught privately by Geoffroy-Alphonse Chocarne and Joseph Guichard. Morisot and her sisters initially started taking lessons so that they could each make a drawing for their father for his birthday.[6] In 1857 Guichard, who ran a school for girls in Rue des Moulins, introduced Berthe and Edma to the Louvre gallery where from 1858 they learned by copying paintings. The Morisots were not only forbidden to work at the museum unchaperoned, but they were also totally barred from formal training.[8] Guichard also introduced them to the works of Gavarni.[9]
As art students, Berthe and Edma worked closely together until 1869, when Edma married Adolphe Pontillon, a naval officer, moved to Cherbourg, and had less time to paint. Letters between the sisters show a loving relationship, underscored by Berthe's regret at the distance between them and Edma's withdrawal from painting. Edma wholeheartedly supported Berthe's continued work and their families always remained close. Edma wrote "... I am often with you in thought, dear Berthe. I'm in your studio and I like to slip away, if only for a quarter of an hour, to breathe that atmosphere that we shared for many years...".[10][11][12]
As a copyist at the Louvre, Morisot met and befriended other artists such as Manet and Monet.[8] In 1861 she was introduced to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, the pivotal landscape painter of the Barbizon school who also excelled in figure painting. Under Corot's influence, she took up the plein air (outdoors) method of working.[14] By 1863 she was studying under Achille Oudinot [fr], another Barbizon painter. In the winter of 1863–64 she studied sculpture under Aimé Millet, but none of her sculptures is known to survive.[9]
Main periods of Morisot's work
Training, 1857–1870
It is hard to trace the stages of Morisot's training and to tell the exact influence of her teachers because she was never pleased with her work and she destroyed nearly all of the artworks she produced before 1869. Her first teacher, Geoffroy-Alphonse Chocarne, taught her the basics of drawing. After several months, Morisot began to take classes taught by Guichard. During this period, she drew mostly ancient classical figures. When Morisot expressed her interests in plein-air painting, Guichard sent her to follow Corot and Oudinot. Painting outdoors, she used watercolors which are easy to carry. At that time, Morisot also became interested in pastel.[15]
Watercolorist, 1870–1874
During this period, Morisot still found oil painting difficult, and worked mostly in watercolor. Her choice of colors is rather restrained; however, the delicate repetition of hues renders a balanced effect. Due to specific characteristics of watercolors as a medium, Morisot was able to create a translucent atmosphere and feathery touch, which contribute to the freshness in her paintings.[15]
Impressionism, 1875–1885
Having become more confident about oil painting, Morisot worked in oil, watercolor and pastel at the same time, as Degas did. She painted very quickly but did much sketching as preparation, so she could paint "a mouth, eyes, and a nose with a single brushstroke." She made countless studies of her subjects, which were drawn from her life so she became quite familiar with them. When it became inconvenient to paint outdoors, the highly finished watercolors done in the preparatory stages allowed her to continue painting indoors later.[15]
Turning, 1885–1887
After 1885, drawing began to dominate in Morisot's works. Morisot actively experimented with charcoals and color pencils. Her reviving interest in drawing was motivated by her Impressionist friends, who are known for blurring forms. Morisot put her emphasis on the clarification of the form and lines during this period. In addition, she was influenced by photography and Japonisme. She adopted the style of placing objects away from the center of the composition from Japanese prints of the time.[15]
Synthesis, 1887–1895
Morisot started to use the technique of squaring and the medium of tracing paper to transcribe her drawing to the canvas exactly. By employing this new method, Morisot was able to create compositions with more complicated interaction between figures. She stressed the composition and the forms while her Impressionist brushstrokes still remained. Her original synthesis of the Impressionist touch with broad strokes and light reflections, and the graphic approach featured by clear lines, made her late works distinctive.[15]
Style and technique
Because she was a female artist, Morisot's paintings were often labeled as being full of "feminine charm" by male critics, for their elegance and lightness. In 1890, Morisot wrote in a notebook about her struggles to be taken seriously as an artist: "I don't think there has ever been a man who treated a woman as an equal and that's all I would have asked for, for I know I'm worth as much as they."
Her light brushstrokes often led to critics using the verb "effleurer" (to touch lightly, brush against) to describe her technique. In her early life, Morisot painted in the open air as other Impressionists to look for truths in observation.[16] Around 1880 she began painting on unprimed canvases—a technique Manet and Eva Gonzalès also experimented with at the time[17]—and her brushwork became looser. In 1888–89, her brushstrokes transitioned from short, rapid strokes to long, sinuous ones that define form.[18] The outer edges of her paintings were often left unfinished, allowing the canvas to show through and increasing the sense of spontaneity. After 1885, she worked mostly from preliminary drawings before beginning her oil paintings.[19] She often worked in oil paint, watercolors, and pastel simultaneously, and sketched using various drawing media. Morisot's works are almost always small in scale.
Morisot creates a sense of space and depth through the use of color. Although her color palette was somewhat limited, her fellow impressionists regarded her as a "virtuoso colorist".[19] She typically made expansive use of white to create a sense of transparency, whether used as a pure white or mixed with other colors. In her large painting The Cherry Tree, the colors are more vivid but still emphasize the form.[19]
Inspired by Manet's drawings, she kept the use of color to a minimum when constructing a motif. Responding to the experiments conducted by Manet and Edgar Degas, Morisot used barely tinted whites to harmonize the paintings. Like Degas, she played with three media simultaneously in one painting: watercolor, pastel, and oil paints. In the second half of her career, she learned from Renoir by mimicking his motifs.[16] She also shared an interest in keeping a balance between the density of figures and the atmospheric traits of light with Renoir in her later works.[15]
Subjects
Jeune Fille au Manteau Vert, oil on canvas, c. 1894
Morisot painted what she experienced on a daily basis. Most of her paintings include domestic scenes of family, children, ladies, and flowers, depicting what women's life was like in the late nineteenth century. Instead of portraying the public space and society, Morisot preferred private, intimate scenes.[16] This reflects the cultural restrictions of her class and gender at that time. Like her fellow Impressionist Mary Cassatt, she focused on domestic life and portraits in which she could use family and personal friends as models, including her daughter Julie and sister Edma. The stenographic presentation of her daily life conveys a strong hope to stop the fleeting passage of time.[16] By portraying flowers, she used metaphors to celebrate womanhood.[15] Prior to the 1860s, Morisot painted subjects in line with the Barbizon school before turning to scenes of contemporary femininity.[20] Paintings like The Cradle (1872), in which she depicted current trends for nursery furniture, reflect her sensitivity to fashion and advertising, both of which would have been apparent to her female audience. Her works also include landscapes, garden settings, boating scenes, and themes of boredom or ennui.[16] Later in her career Morisot worked with more ambitious themes, such as nudes.[21] In her late works, she often referred to the past to recall a memory from her earlier life and youth, and her departed companions.[16]
Morisot's first appearance in the Salon de Paris came at the age of twenty-three in 1864, with the acceptance of two landscape paintings. She continued to show regularly in the Salon, to generally favorable reviews, until 1873, the year before the First Impressionist Exhibition. She exhibited with the Impressionists from 1874 onwards, only missing the exhibition in 1878 when her daughter was born.[22]
Impressionism's alleged attachment to brilliant color, sensual surface effects, and fleeting sensory perceptions led a number of critics to assert in retrospect that this style, once primarily the battlefield of insouciant, combative males, was inherently feminine and best suited to women's weaker temperaments, lesser intellectual capabilities, and greater sensibility.[23]
During Morisot's 1874 exhibition with the Impressionists, such as Monet and Manet, Le Figaro critic Albert Wolff noted that the Impressionists consisted of "five or six lunatics of which one is a woman...[whose] feminine grace is maintained amid the outpourings of a delirious mind."[8]
Morisot's mature career began in 1872. She found an audience for her work with Durand-Ruel, the private dealer, who bought twenty-two paintings. In 1877, she was described by the critic for Le Temps as the "one real Impressionist in this group."[24] She chose to exhibit under her full maiden name instead of using a pseudonym or her married name.[25] As her skill and style improved, many began to rethink their opinion toward Morisot. In the 1880 exhibition, many reviews judged Morisot among the best, even including Le Figaro critic Albert Wolff.[26]
Morisot came from an eminent family, the daughter of a government official and the great-niece of Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard.[27] She met her longtime friend and colleague, Édouard Manet, in 1868. By the introduction of Manet, Morisot was married to Édouard's brother, Eugène Manet in 1874. On November 14, 1878, she gave birth to her only child, Julie, who posed frequently for her mother and other Impressionist artists, including Renoir and her uncle Édouard.
Correspondence between Morisot and Édouard Manet shows warm affection, and Manet gave her an easel as a Christmas present. Morisot often posed for Manet and there are several portrait paintings of Morisot such as Repose (Portrait of Berthe Morisot) and Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet.[28] Morisot died on March 2, 1895, in Paris, of pneumonia contracted while attending to her daughter Julie's similar illness, thus making Julie an orphan at the age of 16. She was interred in the Cimetière de Passy.[29]
It has been speculated that there was a repressed love between Manet and Morisot, exemplified by the numerous portraits he did of her before she married his brother.[30][31]
Works
La Coiffure, 1894
Selection of works
This list is incomplete, you can help by expanding it with certified entries.
This limited selection is based in part on the book Berthe Morisot by Charles F. Stuckey, William P. Scott and Susan G. Lindsay, which is in turn drawn from the 1961 catalogue by Marie-Louise Bataille, Rouaart Denis and Georges Wildenstein. There are variations between the dates of execution, first showing and purchase. Titles may vary between sources.
1864–1874
Étude, 1864, oil on canvas, 60.3 × 73 cm, private collection[32]
Chaumière en Normandie, 1865, oil on canvas, 46 × 55 cm, private collection[33]
La Seine en aval du pont d'Iéna, 1866, oil on canvas, 51 × 73 cm, private collection[34]
La Rivière de Pont Aven à Roz-Bras, 1867, oil on canvas, 55 × 73 cm, private collection – Chicago[35]
Bateaux à l'aurore, 1869, pastel on paper, 19.7 × 26.7 cm, private collection[36]
Jeune fille à sa fenêtre, 1869, oil on canvas, 36.8 × 45.4 cm, private collection
Intérieur, 1871, oil on canvas, 60 × 73 cm, private collection[44]
Portrait de Madame Pontillon, 1871, pastel on paper, 85.5 × 65.8 cm, Louvre – drawings cabinet[45] gift of Madame Edma Pontillon to the Louvre in 1921, in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay[46]
Deux filles assises près d'une table, 1880, crayon and watercolour on paper 19,6 × 26.6 cm private collection Germany
Bateaux sur la Seine. c. 1880, 25.5 × 50 cm. Provenance: acquired from the artist's family by the first owner, sold with a letter of authenticity from Daniel Wildenstein at Sotheby's, 1984.
Morisot's work sold comparatively well. She achieved the two highest prices at a Hôtel Drouot auction in 1875, the Interior (Young Woman with Mirror) sold for 480 francs, and her pastel On the Lawn sold for 320 francs.[122][123] Her works averaged 250 francs, the best relative prices at the auction.[124]
In February 2013, Morisot became the highest priced female artist, when After Lunch (1881), a portrait of a young redhead in a straw hat and purple dress, sold for $10.9 million at a Christie's auction. The painting achieved roughly three times its upper estimate,[125][126][127] and it exceeded the 2012 record of $10.7 million for a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois.[125]
She was featured as the "A First Impressionist" in an article written by Anne Truitt in the New York Times on June 3, 1990.[129]
From Melissa Burdick Harmon, an editor at Biography magazine, "While some of Morisot's work may seem to us today like sweet depictions of babies in cradles, at the time these images were considered extremely intimate, as objects related to infants belonged exclusively to the world of women."[8]
In 2019, the Musée d'Orsay devoted a temporary exhibition to Berthe Morisot to pay tribute to her work.
Exhibition
Selected Berthe Morisot Solo Exhibitions
Date
Paris, Boussod, Valadon et Cie. Exposition de tableaux, pastels et dessins par Berthe Morisot.
1892, May 25 – June 18
Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel. Berthe Morisot (Madame Eugene Manet): exposition de son œuvre.
^The scene L'Entrée du port is often confused with L'Entrée du port de Cherbourg purchased in 1874 by Durand-Ruel, or confused with Le Port de Cherbourg
^Commire, Anne, ed. (2001). Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. Waterford: Yorkin Publications, Gale Group. p. 448. ISBN978-0-78764-070-5.
^"Berthe Morisot par Edouard Manet, le désir en peinture". Le Monde. October 18, 2023. Archived from the original on October 18, 2023. Retrieved October 18, 2023. Tous les portraits de Berthe Morisot par Manet sont magnifiques, pleins de son amour pour celle qui avait épousé son frère Eugène. Ils disent un désir qui n'a pu s'exprimer et c'est autour de cette part manquante que j'ai imaginé mon exposition
Bataille, Marie-Louise; Wildenstein, Georges (1961). Berthe Morisot : Catalogue des peintures, pastels et aquarelles. Paris: Les Beaux-Arts. OCLC490107208.
Denvir, Bernard (1993). The Chronicle of Impressionism: An Intimate Diary of the Lives and World of the Great Artists. London: Thames & Hudson. OCLC43339405
Higonnet, Anne (1990). Berthe Morisot. New York: Harper & Row.
Turner, Jane (2000). From Monet to Cézanne: Late 19th-century French Artists. Grove Art. New York: St Martin's Press. ISBN0-312-22971-2
Manet, Julie, Rosalind de Boland Roberts, and Jane Roberts (1987). Growing Up with the Impressionists: The Diary of Julie Manet. London: Sotheby's Publications.
Shennan, Margaret (1996). Berthe Morisot: The First Lady of Impressionism. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. ISBN0-7509-2339-3
Further reading
Rouart, Denis, ed. (1959). The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot with her family and her friends. New York: E. Weyhe.
Stuckey, Charles F. and William P. Scott with the assistance of Suzanne G. Lindsay (1987). Berthe Morisot: Impressionist. New York: Hudson Hill Press.
![Woman at her Toilette, 1875, The Art Institute of Chicago[121]](File:Berthe_Morisot_-_Woman_at_Her_Toilette_-_1924.127_-_Art_Institute_of_Chicago.jpg)
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