Berthe Morisot was a French painter, born in Bourges in 1841, who died in Paris in 1895. She was one of the founders of Impressionism and the only woman in its first exhibition, in 1874. She is remembered for her paintings of women, children and gardens, and for the portraits Édouard Manet made of her. She married his brother.
She was in the room on the day the movement started, and she hung there a picture of her sister watching over a sleeping baby.
Cool Stories About Art is a newsletter to learn art the fun way.
Join 200,000+ readers and get:
10 new art stories / month
The entire archive of content (1,000+ articles)
Comment, ask questions, and chat with other readers
The exhibition opened on 15 April 1874 in the former studio of the photographer Nadar, on the boulevard des Capucines. Morisot's painting was called The Cradle. The baby sleeping under a veil of netting is her niece Blanche. The young woman watching over her is her sister Edma, who had painted beside Berthe for years and had stopped when she married.
Morisot put a price on The Cradle and found no buyer. The critic of Le Figaro called the whole show the work of a handful of lunatics, one of them a woman. Eight months later, on 22 December 1874, she married Eugène Manet, the brother of the painter who had been painting her for years. It would take the French state another twenty years to buy a single canvas of hers, the year before she died.
What You'll Discover
Why her sister put down the brush.
Who painted her again and again.
Why she left the official Salon.
Where a respectable woman could not go.
What her death certificate left blank.