Famous Paintings Reviewed

Famous Paintings of Berthe Morisot

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An art history blog post from Famous Paintings Reviewed.

Like many female painters in art history, the life of Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was punctuated by a series of “firsts” and breaks from convention en route to her creating famous paintings.

She was the first female painter to exhibit with the French Impressionists, and was one of the few female artists (from any period in art history) who participated in a pictorial movement from its onset. Not bad for an artist whose 1895 death certificate claims she had “no profession”! 

Born into an upper middle class family in Bourges, Berthe Morisot and her sister, Edma, were trained by Joseph Benoit-Guichard, who was scandalized when the Morisot women asked to paint en plein air (outside), a novel practice at the time. Benoit-Guichard introduced the Morisot sisters to Camille Corot (1796-1875), with whom they painted in the summer of 1861. 

Four years later, Berthe Morisot painted one of the first Impressionist paintings ever made, Refuge in Normandy.  This 1865 work portends some of the movement's defining traits like direct application of paint and rapid, short brushstrokes.

Landscapes typical of the time showed broad swaths of sky or countryside, but Morisot opts instead for a small rectangular section of sky that spreads diffuse light into the forest.  Her balancing of deep, shadowy greens with ochres provides depth and atmosphere in the forest, while the low view point renders the woods present and immediate. 

When Morisot was in the Louvre in 1868, her fellow artist, Henri Fantin-Latour, introduced her to Edouard Manet, who asked Morisot to model for him. She quickly became his favorite, first appearing in the left foreground in Le Balcon or The Balcony, deemed a  provocative painting because Manet painted an immediate "moment" rather than a history painting and used vivid, saturated hues.

In an 1873 portrait of Morisot entitled Le Repos, Manet inaccurately predicted Morisot wouldn't be recognizable in his finished work -- but she was, and shared in the scorn heaped upon yet another Manet painting. One critic went so far as to call Morisot the “queen of slovenliness” for the manner in which she sat (I frankly think she looks divinely comfortable!).

The friendship between Morisot and Manet endured.  Morisot entered the Manet family when she married Eugene, Edouard's brother, in 1874; he supported her career, and Morisot continued to paint.  Through the Manets she was introduced to numerous French Impressionist painters including Pisarro, Sisley, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne and Monet, who joined her in showing in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874.

Up next: Morisot is one of the Impressionist painters to receive praise at the exhibition -- and praise was hard to come by.

And for the art history buffs among us, a question: What painting and  famous painter was Manet directly referencing in his The Balcony?