Passport June 2023

While female artists like Tracey Emin and Rachel Whiteread are as well known today as their male counterparts, there were far fewer of them in the 19th century and these women did not have the same access to training as men did.

Berthe Morisot, an important member of the group of Impressionist painters, was born in Bourges, France, on 14 January 1841. Her family were relatively well off, her father being an important local official in the Cher department. Her mother was a great niece of the Rococo artist Fragonard. The family moved to Paris in 1852, where Berthe and her sisters went to school and were given lessons in drawing and painting. This was not unusual for girls of bourgeois families, as it was considered a suitable pastime for young ladies. In 1857 Berthe and one of her sisters, Edma, were taken by their teacher to the Louvre Gallery, where they began copying paintings as part of their artistic education. However, they were not allowed into the museum unchaperoned and were not allowed to have any formal training. The sisters worked closely together until 1869, when Edma married and moved to Cherbourg. Another sister, Yves, who married a tax inspector, was painted by Edgar Degas – the canvas “Mrs Theodore Gobillard” – now exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

While copying paintings in the Louvre, the sisters met other artists, such as Monet, Manet and Corot. Berthe would marry Eugène Manet, the brother of the famous Édouard, in 1874, and bore her only child, Julie Manet, in November 1878. Julie would later sit for her mother and other artists including Renoir and her Uncle Édouard. Manet also painted Berthe, with whom he had a close relationship.

Under Corot’s influence Berthe took up painting outside (plein air), where she worked in watercolours and sometimes pastels. Her work before 1869 was mostly destroyed by her, as she didn’t consider it good enough, so it’s difficult to trace her early evolution as an artist. However, she did exhibit at the Salon de Paris in 1864 and then in six subsequent salons. These were the official exhibitions of the Academie de Beaux Arts in Paris. Then in 1874 she joined other Impressionists, who had all been rejected by the Salon, in putting on their own exhibition. The other artists included such famous names such as Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne and Sisley.

From 1875 onwards she became more confident in using oils alongside the watercolours and pastels. Men would describe her work, which was elegant and light, as being “full of feminine charm”. She wrote in 1890 about the difficulties she had experienced in being taken seriously as an artist and wished to be treated as an equal by men “for I know I am worth as much as they”.

She painted what she knew and saw on a daily basis: family scenes, a mother next to a cradle, flowers, ladies at their toilette and children. This reflects the limited experience a woman would have had in those days. Landscapes, including gardens and boating scenes are also to be found, although her later works do include nudes and memories from her youth.

As an Impressionist, she worked with brilliant colour and sensual effects, which led critics of the movement to say that Impressionism was more suited to female artists, as they had weaker temperaments and lesser intellectual capabilities but also greater sensibility.

Today her works can be found all over the world, but mainly in the USA and Europe. The Musée Marmottan and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris have a few and a scene on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne can be seen in the National Gallery in London.

Berthe died on 2 March 1895 after contracting pneumonia, which she seemingly caught from her daughter. She was only 54 and presumably still had a lot to give to the world of art.