Historical Profile – Berthe Morisot

Today post is about one of my favorite people from history; Berthe Morisot. Berthe Morisot was a French artist, best known as an Impressionist painter. For some background info, lets talk about the Impressionist Movement for a minute.

The Impressionist Movement was an art movement that was at its height of popularity from the 1870s through the 1880s. Impressionism is defined by its smaller, looser, and visible brush strokes. Impressionism also used lighter colors than previous eras of art. Another thing that set the Impressionists apart was they often painted en plein air. (Outdoors) The Impressionists wanted to paint what they saw. They didn’t want to show the perfect structure of a tree, they wanted to paint the way the tree looked. They wanted to demonstrate how people and things looked in that moment, not focus on all the little details. Unfortunately, for the Impressionists, the Académie des Beaux-Arts was in control of the French art scene. The Académie’s main goal was to preserve traditional French painting techniques and styles. The Académie preferred art that depicted historical themes, religious pictures, and portraits. They wanted paintings that looked life-like even up close, so brush strokes were expected to be perfectly blended. The colors of the paintings were usually darker and toned down. Every year the Académie hosted the Salon de Paris; an art show to judge art and decide if it was good or not. The Salon de Paris didn’t like the Impressionists paintings. They didn’t like the way the Impressionists paintings were usually landscapes, and still life. They didn’t like the Impressionists use of lighter colors, and they didn’t like that you could see the brush strokes. So the Impressionists formed their own group and hosted their own exhibitions.

The first Impressionist exhibit took place in 1874. The group consisted of Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, and several others. At that time they called themselves the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs. (Cooperative and Anonymous Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers) After their first exhibition, critic Louis Leroy wrote a (not so nice) review titled “The Exhibition of The Impressionists.” Leroy wrote about one of Claude Monet’s paintings in his article, the painting was called Impression, Sunrise. He said Monet’s painting was at most a sketch, and couldn’t be considered a finished piece of work. After that the group decided to embrace the term and started calling themselves The Impressionists. They held a total of eight exhibitions from 1874 to 1886. Berthe Morisot participated in all but one. She only missed one because of her daughter’s birth.

Berthe Morisot was born on January 14th, 1841. She was born into an extremely wealthy family. It was quite common that girls from wealthy families received an art education in their youth. Of course they would be expected to give up their art when they got married. Early in her training though, Berthe decided she wanted to be an artist. She and her sister Edma pursued art until Edma got married. Even after her marriage Edma was highly encouraging to her sister and supported her in her career. An upset Berthe decided to continue her art career and remain single forever. While society frowned upon her decision, Berthe’s parents were completely supportive. Her mother was especially supportive, and attended every exhibition of her daughter’s work. Berthe did eventually get married in 1874 to Eugène Manet. In 1878, she had a daughter, Julie Manet. Berthe Morisot chose to keep working under her maiden name instead of a pseudonym and she continued to use her maiden name even after her marriage. Her husband was extremely supportive of her. He even gave up pursuing his own art career so she could be fully focused on her work. After one particularly bad review of the Second Impressionist Exhibition, Eugène had to be prevented from challenging Albert Wolff to a duel. He was extremely angry at the way Albert Wolff’s review portrayed Berthe. Berthe herself just shrugged of the insults.

Berthe Morisot was known for painting more domestic scenes, depicting families, mothers, children, flowers, and women. Because of this her work was often labelled by male critics as being filled with “feminine charm.” She did not like these kinds of critiques, feeling they did not see her as a true artist. She fought against this her entire life. Once she wrote in a notebook: “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.” Unfortunately she is still often left out of articles and other media sources about the Impressionists. Even though in 1877 a critic from Le Temps referred to her as the “one real Impressionist in this group.” She organized the eighth and final Impressionist Exhibition almost entirely by herself. Her career started to take off after she sold twenty-two works to art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.

She continued her work right up to her death in 1895. She died unexpectedly of pneumonia, leaving behind her daughter Julie. Berthe Morisot should be considered as one of the women who made pursuing a career in art a possibility for other women. She was a revolutionary artist, far ahead of her time. Everyone can find inspiration in her life, and in her art. We owe it to her to continue sharing her work with the world.