Berthe Morisot: the Great Lady of Impressionism

"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."

This essay is part of an ongoing series celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the First Impressionist Exhibition, which debuted in Paris in 1874. If you’d like to read other essays on the history of Impressionism, you can do so here.

Woman at Her Toilette, Berthe Morisot ca. 1875-1880. Via the Art Institute of Chicago.

Two teenage girls enter the Louvre with their easels in tow. The younger of the pair is seventeen years old, and beneath her chestnut curls lies a discerning gaze that scrutinizes the gallery’s Old Masters. She and her sister are there to copy paintings, a common practice to help young artists hone their technique. But the year is 1858, and the Morisot sisters are, well, girls—they can’t visit the Louvre unchaperoned. Luckily, their mother is supportive of their ambitions, and she trails behind them as they settle in for a few hours of sketching.

The Louvre wasn’t always a museum. Once a medieval fortress, it was expanded and renovated under Francis I, who in 1546 decided to make it his primary residence. After Louis XIV moved the royal court to Versailles in 1682, the grand palace in the center of Paris became a private royal gallery and the home of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Of course, the French Revolution would do away with all of that, and this transformation into a public museum is what allows the Morisot sisters to visit the Louvre for drawing practice. As the young Berthe Morisot attends to her sketch, she has no idea the role she will play in another kind of revolution—one that will shake the foundations of the art world and pave the way for the modern artists who will follow her. 

Berthe Morisot was born in 1841 in Bourges, France. She came from an affluent, artistic family; her mother was the great-niece of the French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and her father studied architecture before pursuing a career in government. Studying art via private tutors was common for bourgeois girls in 19th-century France. Pursuing art as a professional career was not, which meant that unlike the other Impressionists in our series, the young Berthe didn’t have access to the studio schools that informed the others’ educations. 

However, her visits to the Louvre provided her with fruitful networking opportunities. It was in those rarefied halls that she met Henri Fantin-Latour, who would later introduce her to Édouard Manet. Dazzled by Morisot’s talent and striking features, Manet invited Morisot and her family to his mother’s Thursday soirées, where prominent artists and writers from Alfred Stevens to Émile Zola were frequent guests. (It was here where Morisot met Edgar Degas as well.)¹ 

Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets, Édouard Manet ca. 1872. This was one of many portraits that Manet painting of Morisot. Via Wikimedia Commons.

As we explored in my essay on Claude Monet, overnight success is incredibly rare for artists, and most toil in obscurity before receiving their big break. Morisot was no exception, and as a woman, she faced the added pressure of seeing her older sisters and friends marry in their twenties. In 1869, she wrote to her older sister Edma (who largely abandoned painting after getting married), “[Painting] is actually nothing but heartache and trouble… You have a serious attachment, and a man’s heart utterly devoted to you. You should realize how lucky you are… A woman has a huge need of affection. To try to withdraw into ourselves is to attempt the impossible.”²

The fact that Manet had recently found a new favorite model and protégée named Eva Gonzalès certainly didn’t help. Morisot would write to Edma about her happiness upon visiting Manet’s studio and coming to the realization that she possessed greater talent than her rival: “To my great surprise and satisfaction, I received the highest praise. It seems that what I do is decidedly better than Eva Gonzalès.”³ Manet and Morisot had a complex relationship—Morisot was a frequent model in his works, and Manet admired her talent. (He famously kept three of her paintings in his bedroom.) But Manet was already married; it’s unclear if he ever acted upon his feelings for Morisot. They spent countless hours alone in his studio, and whether their mutual affection resulted in an affair has never been proven. Manet would eventually introduce Morisot to his younger brother, whom she would marry at the age of thirty-three and share one daughter.⁴

The Mother and Sister of the Artist, Berthe Morisot ca. 1869-1870. Via the U.S. National Gallery of Art.

All the while, Morisot remained a key member of the burgeoning Impressionist movement. While she couldn’t participate in café-culture as an unmarried, bourgeois woman, she connected with other artists at private salons and by modeling for paintings.⁵ Despite the fact that women were banned from the École des Beaux-Arts, they were not barred from showing at the Salon. She was able to place a few works at the Salon, including The Mother and Sister of the Artist (1869-1870). Already, the intimacy of her later works is palpable in this painting, as well as the light, feathery technique that would make her notable. 

It’s only very recently that academics have begun to examine their criminal overlook of female artists. The true scope of Morisot’s contribution to Impressionism is just now getting the attention it deserves, including her role in the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874. As Degas would write to Morisot’s mother, “Miss Berthe Morisot’s name and talent are too important to us to do without.”⁶ It was at the exhibition that she publicly established herself as a member of this avant-garde group, in spite of Manet’s warning that she may be branded as anti-Salon.  

The Cradle, Berthe Morisot ca. 1872. Via Wikimedia Commons.

While that first exhibition was initially deemed a failure, it was the catalyst by which the Impressionists later became household names. Morisot’s paintings received better reviews than the others—particularly, The Cradle (1872). This lovely painting shows an intimate moment between a mother and a baby, a scene that would have been familiar to many of the female attendees of the exhibition, but not something that would typically find its way into the halls of the Salon. To a 19th-century viewer, displaying this kind of art in public was a radical act.

Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight, Berthe Morisot ca. 1875. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Morisot would go on to participate in every single Impressionist Exhibition, except for the year that her daughter Julie was born. Her work would grow even more radical as the years went on; the feathery brush strokes that she used in her earlier works grew looser over time, paving the way for the post-Impressionist works of Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch. She would also be featured in Durand-Ruel’s gallery shows in New York, which were responsible for giving the Impressionists a global platform. 

La Psyché, Berthe Morisot ca. 1876. Via Wikimedia Commons.

A great frustration of Morisot’s was the manner in which male critics dismissed her work, in spite of her growing sales later in life. They complimented her paintings’ “feminine charm,” but as with any female artist of her time, she struggled to be taken seriously. Upon her death, the majority of her artworks were in the hands of friends and family rather than art dealers.  

Hanging the Laundry out to Dry, Berthe Morisot ca. 1875. Via the U.S. National Gallery of Art.

It’s easy to look upon her images of women and children without recognizing the groundbreaking nature of her art. While all of the Impressionists had their roles in this creative revolution, Morisot (along with Mary Cassatt) can stake her claim in elevating the domestic sphere to high art. Today, we take this level of intimacy in paintings for granted, but her ability to capture tender scenes between mothers and children and her exploration of the interiority of female subjects comprised largely uncharted territory at the time. Keep in mind that the paintings revered by the male-dominated Salon focused primarily on historical or mythological subjects. “Important” events. Yet the single most important event, the beginning of everything—and the women whose physical sacrifices allow for us to come into being—were relegated to the peripheries. And the daily lives of middle class women? To the artistic establishment, these moments mattered little.

Julie Daydreaming, Berthe Morisot ca. 1894. Via Wikimedia Commons.

For too long, academics treated Morisot as a footnote rather than a founder. This is finally changing, and in recent years, museums have begun hosting solo exhibitions of her work (including a major show at the Musée d’Orsay in 2019). Morisot wanted to be recognized as an equal to her male peers, and while it took 150 years, her desire is now coming to fruition. In her words, “I know I’m worth as much as they,” and it’s high time that the rest of us know it, too.

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Related essays from The Crossroads Gazette:

• Manet at the Café - “Never will he completely overcome the gaps in his temperament, but he has temperament, that is the important thing.” Read the full story here.

• The (Eventual) Triumph of Claude Monet - “P.S. I was so upset yesterday that I made the blunder of throwing myself into the water. Fortunately, there were no bad results.” Read the full story here.

Exclusives for Crossroads patrons:

• Patron Podcast: Marie Antoinette - The Early Years - In the first episode of a two-part series, we’ll explore the doomed queen’s early reign, and the problems within the French court that would later fuel the fires of revolution. Listen to the latest episode here.

• Last week’s Crossroads Roundup: How the Pyramids Were Built, the World’s Oldest Calendar, and a Medieval Village Found in Munich - Our favorite stories on art, archaeology, folklore, and more from this past week. Read the full story here.

1. Sue Roe, The Private Lives of the Impressionists (London: Vintage, 2006), 53.

2. Roe, Private Lives, 56.

3. John Rewald, The History of Impressionism: Fourth, Revised Edition (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973), 220.

4. Berthe Morisot is not the only famous female artist with a daughter named Julie. Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s daughter was also named Julie, and like Morisot, the artist often painted her child. Patrons may recall a video I created this past winter about the life of Vigée Le Brun; it can be accessed here.

5. Rewald, History of Impressionism, 204.

6. Roe, Private Lives, 119.