One of the greatest Impressionists was a woman - but Berthe Morisot received little recognition. Now an exhibition rights the wrong, writesLara Marlowe from Lille in France.
Berthe Morisot, the first female Impressionist painter, seemed to lead a charmed life. Born into a grand bourgeois family in 1841, she grew up in the stylish Paris neighbourhood of Passy. At 12 years old, she and her sister, Edma, began private art lessons and later studied for two years with realist master Jean-Baptiste Corot. When Morisot was only 23, she and Edma exhibited for the first time at the official Salon. Their father indulged his talented daughters, building a studio for them in the garden.
Above all, Edma and Berthe's mother, Marie-Cornelie, wanted them to find suitable husbands. Auguste Renoir, who was born in the same year as Morisot and who was, along with Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and the poet,Stéphane Mallarmé, one of her closest friends, said she came "from the most austerely bourgeois milieu ever, at a time when a child who wanted to be a painter wasn't far from being considered the dishonour of the family".
Edma's fine portrait of Berthe at her easel in 1865 shows what talent the elder Morisot had. But Edma gave up painting to marry a naval officer. Perhaps frightened by her sister's regrets, Berthe Morisot rejected suitor after suitor. "I will only obtain my independence through perseverance and by showing very openly my intention to emancipate myself," she wrote to Edma in 1871.
Morisot was such a perfectionist that she destroyed most of her early works. Though the surviving paintings are as wonderful as any by her male contemporaries, the misogyny of art historians long deprived her of the recognition she deserved. The last Morisot exhibition in France was held in 1961. Now the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille has righted the wrong, by displaying 90 of Morisot's finest paintings until June, after which they will move to the Fondation Giannadda, in Martigny, Switzerland, until November 19th. Many are on loan from museums and private collections in the US and have not been seen in Europe for more than a century.
This is an exquisite exhibition, consolation for those who missed the Impressionists at the National Gallery in Dublin and a delightful encore for those who saw it. Morisot's Young woman dressing up, seen from the back was owned by US Impressionist Mary Cassat, who was a friend of hers. It shows one of Morisot's favourite themes: an elegant woman in a beautiful dress before a mirror, amid a swirl of flowers and Degas-like colours.
Morisot said her goal in painting was "to capture something as it passes". It could be anything, she elaborated, "the smallest thing . . . a smile, a flower, a fruit, the branch of a tree . . ." Young woman in a ball dress was the only Morisot painting bought by the French state before her death in 1895. The blonde model in her décolletté dress has charm, but no emotional charge. "Everything floats, nothing is formulated," the critic Paul Mantz wrote when he saw Young woman at the fifth Impressionist exhibition in 1880. "Even the tone is indecisive, and there is a finesse like that found in Fragonard . . ."
Did Mantz know that Morisot was the great grand-niece of that 18th-century painter? When Morisot completed View of Paris from the Trocadero, she fretted that it resembled a painting by her close friend - possibly lover - Edouard Manet. Although it was painted in the year of the Paris Commune, there is no trace of destruction in the bucolic scene. The familiar landmarks of Les Invalides and the Pantheon form the backdrop behind two elegant ladies and a child.
Morisot painted the intimate, feminine world of women and children which she knew. With the exception of her late self- portraits, showing her as a careworn, grey-haired woman, her canvases betrayed nothing of her inner mystery and turmoil.
Paintings such as Summer Day, showing two women with straw hats and parasols boating in the Bois de Boulogne, strengthen the image of an idyllic life.
Biographers suspect Morisot pined for Edouard Manet. Yet she defied his advice and participated in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. (Manet himself chose never to exhibit with the group.) She showed nine paintings, including The Cradle, still her most famous work. Until Mary Cassat joined them in 1879, Morisot was the only woman in the movement, and was regarded by her male colleagues as an equal.
Art critics of the time described her as the only true Impressionist. Albert Wolff wrote in Le Figaro in April, 1876: "There is also a woman in the group . . . and she's curious to watch. She manages to maintain female grace in the midst of the excesses of a delirious mind." Morisot's husband, Eugene, was so angry that he challenged Wolff to a duel.
The Morisot sisters had spent most of the 1860s copying masterpieces in the Louvre, a normal pastime for artists of the day. Although Berthe noticed the handsome blond painter, Edouard Manet, as early as 1860, eight years passed before she was formally introduced to him. Manet earned a scandalous reputation with the nudes in Olympia and Déjeuner sur l'herbe, and when he asked Morisot to pose for him - fully clothed - her mother went with her to his studio.
Manet painted 14 portraits of Morisot in six years. That he kept seven of them showed his attachment to the intelligent, wild-looking young woman with dark hair and eyes. Poet Paul Valéry, a nephew of Morisot's by marriage, said the stunning Berthe Morisot with a bouquet of violets was Manet's finest work. Manet painted a smaller canvas showing only the violets pinned to Berthe's bosom, with the words, "To Mademoiselle Berthe Morisot . . ." written on the card beside them. Morisot kept the painting her whole life, and tried to buy two of Manet's portraits of her after he died in 1883.
Were Manet and Morisot lovers? The question is one of the great mysteries of art history. Morisot never spoke of her many sittings for the married painter, and in 1874, she married his brother, Eugene. The day after Edouard died of syphilis, Berthe wrote to Edma: "Add to these almost physical emotions the long friendship that tied me to Edouard, our shared past made up of youth and work, that has disintegrated, and you will understand that I am broken." Morisot said she would never forget "the old days of friendship and intimacy with him, when I posed for him and his lively mind kept me alert for long hours".
Eugene Manet did not have his brother's charm or talent, but he devoted himself totally to his wife's career. Their only child, Julie, was born in 1879. Morisot described her as "a Manet to the tip of her fingers". Her daughter was the greatest love of her life, and one of her favourite models. "I look sad in this graceful portrait," Julie wrote in her diary in 1894, describing one of her mother's last paintings. Eugene Manet had died two years earlier. "In Mama's last works, there is often an impression of sadness. Ah, she was so sad, so unhappy."
Berthe Morisot is at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille until June 9th