Berthe Morisot

Berthe Morisot was born in Bourges, France, in 1841, into a family with connections to the painter Fragonard. She and her sister Edma trained under Camille Corot, who recognized their talent and introduced them to serious working methods. When the Louvre opened its collections to women copyists, Morisot was among the first to take advantage — she met Édouard Manet there, who would become a close professional friend and who painted her portrait several times. She exhibited in seven of the eight Impressionist exhibitions, more than Renoir, more than Sisley, more than most of the men whose names now define the movement. Her work was admired by Manet, Degas, and Mallarmé. She married Manet's brother Eugène in 1874. What she painted was the interior — not as limitation but as subject. Women reading, women at mirrors, children in gardens, the domestic world that men of her class and era did not have access to in the same way. Her brushwork was loose and immediate, her color luminous, her sense of composition unconventional. Critics noticed but often described her gifts in diminutive terms — "feminine," "delicate" — that managed to praise her while keeping her at a distance from serious consideration. She died of pneumonia in 1895. When her daughter organized a memorial exhibition, her name was left off the invitations by an administrator who had not thought to include her. She is now understood as central to Impressionism, not peripheral to it.

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