Berthe Morisot

Lore & Background

Morisot was born into an affluent bourgeois family in Bourges. Her father was a senior administrator and her mother was the great-niece of Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard. She had two older sisters, Yves and Edma, and a younger brother, Tiburce. The family moved to Paris in 1852. As was common for daughters of bourgeois families, Berthe and her sisters received private art education, initially from Geoffroy-Alphonse Chocarne and later Joseph Guichard. Guichard introduced them to the Louvre, where they copied paintings, though they were forbidden to work unchaperoned and barred from formal training. Morisot later studied under Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, adopting his plein air method, and under Achille Oudinot. In 1864 she exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon, listed as a student of Guichard and Oudinot, and her work was selected for six subsequent Salons. In 1874 she joined the first Impressionist exhibition, held at the studio of photographer Nadar, alongside Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. She was married to Eugène Manet, brother of her friend and colleague Édouard Manet.

Reader's Guide

Berthe Morisot's significance lies in her central role within the Impressionist movement as one of its few female members. She exhibited in seven of the eight Impressionist exhibitions, missing only the 1879 show due to the birth of her daughter. Her work was initially described by critics in gendered terms, with Le Figaro critic Albert Wolff calling the Impressionists 'five or six lunatics of which one is a woman,' though later reviews, including Wolff's, judged her among the best. Morisot's style evolved from early training in drawing and watercolor to a mature Impressionist technique characterized by light brushstrokes and unprimed canvases. She later incorporated clearer forms and lines influenced by photography and Japonism. Art critic Gustave Geffroy in 1894 named her one of 'Les trois grandes dames' of Impressionism, alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt. Her legacy is that of a pioneering female artist who navigated the constraints of her era to produce a substantial body of work, though she destroyed nearly all her pre-1869 pieces. She wrote in 1890 about her struggle to be taken seriously as an artist, noting that no man had treated her as an equal.

Did You Know?

• Morisot exhibited in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 at the studio of photographer Nadar.
• She was married to Eugène Manet, brother of the painter Édouard Manet.
• She destroyed nearly all of the artworks she produced before 1869.
• She was described by art critic Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of 'Les trois grandes dames' of Impressionism.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"His [ Edouard Manet's] paintings, as they always do, produce the impression of a wild or even a somewhat unripe fruit. I do not in the least dislike them." — Berthe Morisot "Corot spoiled the 'étude' [study] we admired so much when we saw it at his home, by redoing it in the studio." — Berthe Morisot "It seems to me a painting [she is working on] like the one I gave Manet ['The Harbour at Lorient'] could perhaps sell, and that is all I care about." — Berthe Morisot "I do not like this place [ Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a small fishing-village on the Spanish border]. I find it arid and dried up. The sea here is ugly. It is either all blue - I hate it like that - or dark and dull." — Berthe Morisot