Berthe Morisot
Photograph of Berthe Morisot.
Image credit: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/morisot/, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The French painter Berthe Morisot is often overshadowed by her fellow Impressionists but was a remarkable talent who garnered respect and achieved professional success despite being prohibited from studying at the Académie des Beaux-Arts due to her gender. Professional female artists were a rarity in 19th century France, but Morisot leveraged her skills and relationships to develop her own style, influence fellow painters, and establish her place in the pantheon of notable French artists.
Morisot was born in 1841 in Bourges in central France where her father was a government administrator. After the family moved to Paris in 1852, her parents engaged private tutors for Berthe and her two older sisters, Yves and Edma. Part of their education included art instruction that included copying paintings at the Louvre, where Berthe came in contact with other developing painters. One of her private teachers, Joseph Guichard, introduced her to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, who would encourage her to expand her repertoire by painting ‘en plein air’ (outdoors). By her early twenties, Berthe Morisot was sufficiently accomplished as an artist to exhibit two landscapes at the prestigious Salon de Paris art exhibition in 1864.
She continued to regularly exhibit at the Paris Salon for the next decade but, having developed working relationships with artists such as Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Henri Fantin-Latour, decided to participate in an alternative exhibition organized by the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs at a photography studio in 1874 instead. This exhibition came to be known as the inauguration of the Impressionist movement, an event that will be revisited through Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment opening at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris later this month through mid-July. The commemoration will then move to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. from September 2024 through January 2025.
Berthe Morisot, Femme à sa toilette (Woman at her Toilette), 1875. The Art Institute of Chicago, USA. Image credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
As an artist, Morisot was self-critical but determined. She destroyed many of her early works, judging them to be wanting, yet persisted at her chosen craft while experimenting with different media and techniques. Her association with fellow artists, particularly Édouard Manet, allowed for the regular exchange of suggestions and ideas that flowed both ways, indicating the respect that Morisot secured among her colleagues. Morisot met and married Eugène Manet, brother of Édouard, in 1874 and gave birth to her only child, Julie, in 1878. Eugène not only encouraged his wife’s artistic career, he also became her manager and did not contest her decision to use her maiden name for professional purposes.
Although her gender kept her from some of the subjects that her peers painted, such as figures and scenes from nightclubs and cafés, Morisot’s access to domestic settings that men did not encounter contributed to her individuality as an artist. She drew from her personal experience to paint intimate indoor views of family life as well as flowers, nature, and harbor scenes that captured the effects of light on various surfaces. Morisot’s sisters, daughter, and art students appear frequently in her paintings, including Edma and her daughter Blanche in one of Morisot’s most famous paintings, Le Berceau (The Cradle).
Many of Morisot’s paintings of women and girls feature close-up, intimate portraits that illustrate aspects of daily life as well as suggesting themes such as family bonds and societal limits and isolation. Femme à sa toilette (Woman at her Toilette) shows a young woman preparing to go out, a contrast from depictions of women by male painters. The artwork is centered on the female form but her back is to viewers, inviting us into a private moment of the woman’s life rather than drawing attention to her visual appeal while acknowledging that she will soon be publicly viewed and appraised. Morisot’s ability to identify and present scenes from her female perspective while excelling at capturing fleeting moments in time was pioneering at that time.
Berthe Morisot, Jeune femme en toilette de bal (Young Firl in a Ball Gown), 1879. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France. Image credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Berthe Morisot did not limit her subjects to scenes of domestic life. Early in her career, the influence of the Barbizon artists such as Corot was evident in her landscape paintings such as Dans les blés (Grain Field), now at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. A young man is stepping forth from a blurry field of grain that takes up much of the painting, far from houses in the background and smoke rising from factories farther beyond. Morisot’s subtle portrayal of industry encroaching on agrarian life showed how she would choose settings and subjects in her paintings to illustrate themes she observed around her. At the same time, her painting techniques, skill at combining watercolor, pastels, and oil paints, and eye for color lent a feeling of spontaneity to her paintings, giving the impression of capturing moments of everyday life.
Paul Durand-Ruel, one of the most prominent French art dealers of the late 19th century, was a stalwart supporter of the Impressionists and purchased nearly two dozen of Morisot’s paintings during her lifetime. The French government paid her a high compliment by acquiring her painting Jeune femme en toilette de bal (Young Girl in a Ball Gown) in 1894. The following year, Julie Manet fell ill with pneumonia and transmitted the disease to her mother, who died in March 1895. Her peers, including Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, honored her by organizing a career retrospective while Julie went on to dedicate her energy toward collecting and exhibiting Morisot’s work.
Today, Morisot’s paintings are now exhibited and held by private collectors throughout the world, the Musée Marmottan in Paris holds a sizeable collection of her works bequeathed by her descendants. Visitors to the museum or its website can see numerous drawings and paintings that show how Morisot developed her artistic approaches and choices of subjects over the span of her career.
Jeu de français
Readers in the Chicago area can view several of Berthe Morisot’s paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago, which also holds a number of her drawings as well as portraits of Morisot by Édouard Manet, Marcellin Gilbert Desboutin, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Learn a bit more about Berthe Morisot by taking the quiz below.
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive Art de vivre posts, information about courses, Conversation Café, special events, and other news from l’Institut français d’Oak Park.