By Laurel Alanna McBrine
The Art of the Portrait Journal
Issue No.50, 4th Quarter 2010
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| Cache-cache (Hide and Seek) Oil on canvas, 1873 Collection of Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York |
Looking back more than a century, we find a painter who,
despite the constraints put upon her by society, managed to fulfill her
artistic ambitions along with marriage and a child. Berthe Morisot would become one of the core
group of six Impressionist painters. She
was born in 1841 to a wealthy and cultured family. Berthe and her sister, Edma, unexpectedly became
serious art students. Their teacher
warned: “With characters like your daughters’, my teaching will make them
painters, not minor amateur talents. Do
you really understand what that means?
In the world of the grande
bourgeoisie in which you move, it would be a revolution, I would even say a
catastrophe.” Berthe’s mother was
undeterred by this advice and the sisters went on to study with Corot, whose
teachings encouraged the development of her unique style. He said, “While trying for the conscientious imitation of
(nature), I never for a single instant lose the emotion which first seized me.”
In
1864, Morisot experienced success when two of her landscapes were accepted by
the Salon and she continued to show there until 1874, when the first Impressionist
exhibit was held. Her
mentor, Edouard Manet, feared that exhibiting with the Impressionists would
harm her career with the Salon, but she courageously chose to follow her own
instincts, remaining loyal to the Impressionist movement.
Relationships with colleagues were affected by Berthe’s
feminine gender. She was not able to
move about freely and was excluded from café society, where male artists met to
discuss new ideas in art. Despite these
limitations, Berthe Morisot established friendships with and was respected,
even admired, by her fellow Impressionists.
She was included in exhibits even though she was not able to attend the
meetings that organized these events. Manet
was so intrigued by her personality and appearance that he painted her image 11
times. Eventually her home became a
salon where Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas and other artists would gather to
socialize.
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| The Cradle Oil on canvas, 1872 Collection of Musee d'Orsay, Paris |
Morisot’s social standing and gender, to some degree,
determined her subject matter – for instance, working from nude models was
verboten. Similarities in subject matter
to Mary Cassatt’s work can be seen. Both
painters captured the everyday moments of women's lives, with deft brushwork –
girls picking fruit, small children in big chairs holding their dolls, women
with babies and ladies in the garden.
A
friend recalled that Morisot: “always painted standing up, walking back and
forth before her canvas. She would stare
at her subject for a long time (and her look was piercing), her hand ready to
place her brushstrokes just where she wanted them.” Laforge noted the result was: “a thousand
conflicting vibrations, in rich prismatic decompositions of color.”
Berthe Morisot was the quintessential Impressionist, her
paintings filled with freely applied brushstrokes - the epitome of a loose,
gestural, painterly style. She sought to
dazzle her viewers at first glance. Upon
closer examination, the daubs and slashes of paint dissolve into a mass of
confusion, but at a distance coalesce into a shimmery vision of color and
light.
Morisot was not spared attacks by critics. Wolff scathingly reported: “five or six
lunatics - among them a woman . . . take up canvas, paint, and brush, throw a
few tones haphazardly and sign the whole thing.” However, not all were unsympathetic – Mantz
wrote, “The truth is that there is only one Impressionist in the group . . . it
is Berthe Morisot. She has already been
acclaimed and should continue to be so.”
Although very attractive, Berthe managed to evade suitors
until age 33, when she married Eugene Manet, younger brother to Edouard. Her husband had a nervous temperament and was
impatient with posing, but he was very supportive and helped her with the
practical details of showing her work.
He was not heavily invested in his own career as a civil servant and was
non-traditional in many of his views. They seem to have been quite content as a
couple.
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| Berthe Morisot by Edouard Manet Oil on linen, 1872 |
In 1878, Berthe gave birth to her daughter, Julie, who
proved to be an inspiration. Berthe managed to continue working steadily from the
earliest days of motherhood by hiring a wet nurse and changing her working
methods. She often painted in her parlor
and would whisk away her palette and paints into a cupboard when visitors would
come to call.
That Berthe Morisot was able to combine life as an artist
with a family testifies to her dedication and determination, as it meant
flouting the conventions of the time.
Her advantages, of having domestic help to deal with the mundane matters
of life, were offset by the expectations of society toward women of that time,
which took great resolve to oppose. Tragically,
she met an early death from pneumonia at age 54, leaving behind a legacy of work
dedicated to Impressionism and her own poetic vision.
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