Berthe Morisot - Female Impressionist

Berthe Morisot was born in the town of Bourges, France into a family that was wealthy, cultured and, above all firmly rooted in the arts. She was the granddaughter of Fragonard, the famous French Rococco painter. Her father was a high-ranking civil servant and the family actively developed the education of their daughters by bringing them private tutors for literature, languages and painting.

Berthe and her sister Edma, who had begun painting and drawing as young girls, soon became accomplished artists and regularly copied masterpieces at the Louvre after the family moved to Paris in 1852. Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot was one of the art tutors of the Morisot sisters and he encouraged the girls to paint out of doors. Corot’s light-filled landscapes were later to be one of the main influences on the Impressionist movement.

Morisot had befriended painter Henri Fantin-Latour and through him came to know Edouard Manet in 1868. It was to be a friendship that would change her life, for not only did Manet introduce Morisot to the circle of Parisian Impressionist painters but in 1874, when she was 33 years old, Berthe married Manet’s younger brother, Eugene. The couple had one daughter, Julie.

Manet and Morisot had a tremendous influence on each other. The two artists regularly exchanged ideas about art and posed for each other’s paintings. Indeed, she appears in eleven of Manet’s paintings, including a striking portrait of Morisot dressed in black after she was widowed. Under Manet’s influence, Morisot distanced herself from Corot’s style and adopted a freer approach to form and color.

Although marriage gave Morisot the social stability women in those days needed, she did not stop painting as her sister Edma had done. By 1874 she was a well-established member of the Impressionists. Although as a woman she was not able to participate in the café discussions on art, the group declared that her paintings, with their light daubs of pure color and unfinished backgrounds, embodied the spirit of Impressionism. She was good friends with Degas and Bazille and, in 1874 she shunned the official Salon and agreed, instead, to join her fellow Impressionists at their first independent exhibition, the “Salon des Refusés” (the Salon of the Rejected). There, Morisot showed paintings drawing on her domestic life, such as The Cradle and Reading as well as some impressionistic landscapes like The Harbor at Cherbourg.

Eugene Manet died in 1892, leaving Berthe a rather young and heartbroken widow. She confided her feelings to her daughter Julie who became her constant companion and even painted alongside her mother, like Edma had done in the past.

Berthe Morisot died of pneumonia in 1895. She was 54 years old. Her first solo exhibition had taken place a few years earlier in 1892. In her lifetime she thought her work had no importance, but after her mother’s death, Julie took care of promoting Morisot’s works by lending them out to exhibitions, starting with a huge memorial exhibition of 300 works in Paris in 1895, and ensuring that Morisot’ contribution to the Impressionist movement would achieve the recognition it deserved.

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