Berthe Morisot
Biography of Female French Impressionist.
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Berthe Morisot
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Berthe Morisot (1841-95)Contents • Biography NOTE: For analysis of works by Impressionist
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ART OF IMPRESSIONISM |
A French painter from a well-to-do family, Morisot was an important if less well-known member of the French Impressionism movement. An exhibitor at all but one of the Impressionist exhibitions, she was a pivotal figure of the group, frequently acting as a go-between among the painters, poets and writers of the circle. Like her fellow woman Impressionist, Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), a leading figure of American Impressionism, Morisot was seriously underrated as an artist - she is still better known for being the sister-in-law of Edouard Manet - but is now considered to be in the first rank of Impressionist painters, and one of the best women artists in modern art. Focusing on Impressionist landscape painting and domestic scenes, important works of French painting by Morisot include: The Cradle (1872, Musee d'Orsay, Paris) and View of Paris From the Heights of the Trocadero (1872, Santa Barbara Museum of Art). |
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POSTERS OF BERTHE
MORISOT WORLDS TOP ARTISTS WORLD'S BEST ART MODERN ARTISTS |
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Morisot was born in Bourges, Cher, into a highly cultured upper-middle class family with artistic connections. Her grandfather was Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806) who, along with Francois Boucher and Antoine Watteau, was one of the famous French artists of the Rococo style. Her sister, Edma Morisot, also became a full-time painter. In the early 1860s, both Morisot sisters were informal pupils of the Romantic landscape painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), who as well as persuading them to take up plein-air painting also introduced them to other artists within his circle. As a result, in 1868, Morisot met Edouard Manet (1832-83), who became her principal artistic mentor. After he died, when Morisot was 42, she also learned from Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). (See also: Impressionism: Origins, Influences.) Meantime, Berthe and Edma worked closely together until such time as Edma married and started a family, after which her painting activity declined - a situation much regretted by her sister. In 1864, Morisot exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon, the prestigious annual art show of the French Academy of Fine Arts in Paris: two of her landscape paintings were selected. Thereafter, she showed at six further Salons - attracting favourable reviews from the critics - until 1874, when she joined the Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which also included works by Claude Monet (1840-1926), Alfred Sisley (1839-99), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and Paul Cezanne (1848-1903). See: Impressionist Exhibitions, Paris. In 1868, Morisot met and befriended Edouard Manet with whom she enjoyed an especially warm relationship. He became a key formative influence on her art, and painted several portraits of her during the course of their friendship, including the striking study of her in a black veil, after her father's death. In turn, she influenced him to take up outdoor painting and adopt the rainbow colour palette of the Impressionists. In addition, she was instrumental in drawing him into the Impressionist group. (See: Impressionism: Early History.) In 1874, she married his brother, Eugene, with whom she had a daughter, Julie. Many of Morisot's works were autobiographical in subject, and her daughter Julie was to feature in several of her paintings. Morisot's art blossomed with the growth of Impressionism during the later 1870s and early 1880s. As a strong opponent of traditional Academic art, as taught in the official academies of Europe, she was an active champion of Impressionist doctrine, putting her daily experiences onto canvas. Her pictures reflect her upbringing and class: eschewing the nude, as well as urban and streetscapes scenes, she focused on landscape painting (garden settings, boating scenes) and portrait art (using family and friends as models). Above all, she portrayed the comfort and intimacy of family life - as in her masterpiece The Cradle (1872). (Note: to understand more about Morisot's style of art, see: Characteristics of Impressionist Painting 1870-1910.) The fact that she excelled in watercolour painting, pastels, and drypoint, as well as oil painting, gives some indication of her exceptional painterly talent. (See also: Impressionist Painting Developments.) Works by Berthe Morisot hang in several of the world's best art museums, notably the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. In addition, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art owns her outstanding painting View of Paris From the Heights of the Trocadero (1872), in which she combines her two main themes - landscape painting and women with children. - The Harbour at Lorient (1869) National
Gallery of Art, Washington DC. |
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