Berthe Morisot: The Complete Story
Berthe Morisot, who lived from 1841 to 1895, was a founder of Impressionism and the only woman in its very first exhibition. She built a major career inside a society that barely let women paint at all, and held the rebel group together as much as anyone.
Five things to know first
Born in 1841 into a cultured French bourgeois family.
Showed in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, the only woman there.
Married Eugene Manet, the brother of the painter Edouard Manet.
Painted the private world of women, the only one open to her.
Long dismissed as a lady amateur, now sold for millions.
Three for a slow afternoon
Three that take a single painting apart, properly:
Ten women artists you need to know, the names the textbooks skipped
Was Monet really the first Impressionist, the painting that may have got there first
The secret behind Hopper Soir Bleu, the clown picture that went wrong
A daughter of the Paris bourgeoisie
Morisot was born in 1841 into a well off family that encouraged drawing as a ladylike accomplishment. Her family was often said to descend from the Rococo painter Fragonard, a claim historians treat with caution.
She and her sister Edma took lessons and copied at the Louvre. Edma gave up painting when she married. Berthe did not, and that refusal shaped her whole life.
She helped invent Impressionism
Morisot was not a follower who joined later. She was there at the start, exhibiting in the first independent show in 1874 alongside Claude Monet and the others, the only woman in the room.
She showed in nearly every Impressionist exhibition that followed, missing just one. She painted outdoors, en plein air, with quick, open brushwork as loose as anyone in the group.
The Manet who married her was the other brother
She met Edouard Manet at the Louvre, and he painted her again and again, including the famous portrait with a bouquet of violets. Their bond was one of the most charged in French art.
In 1874 she married not Edouard but his brother, Eugene Manet, who supported her career. The full story of her and Edouard is told in Manet and Morisot, the secret affair.
She painted the only world she was allowed into
A respectable woman could not roam cafes, bars and backstage like the men did. So Morisot painted what she could reach: women reading, dressing, sewing, mothers with children, gardens and drawing rooms.
She turned that narrow world into serious art, and made the domestic interior a real Impressionist subject rather than a lesser one.
The glue of the group
Morisot was central socially as well as artistically. She hosted the dinners where Monet, Renoir, Degas and the poet Mallarme argued and planned, keeping a fractious group in contact.
Her daughter, Julie Manet, grew up among these painters and later left a diary that is one of the best eyewitness records of the Impressionist world.
Dismissed, then reclaimed
For a century she was filed away as a charming minor talent, a woman who painted pretty domestic scenes. That verdict has been overturned.
She is now seen as one of the core Impressionists, and her paintings sell for millions, among the highest prices ever paid for a woman artist. She also appears in 10 Women Artists You Need to Know and The Old Masters Were Women Too.
A few questions about Berthe Morisot
Who was Berthe Morisot?
A French painter and a founding member of the Impressionist movement.
When and where was she born?
In 1841, in Bourges, France, into a bourgeois family.
Who was her husband?
Eugene Manet, brother of the painter Edouard Manet.
What was her link to Edouard Manet?
He was a close friend who painted her many times, and later her brother in law. More in Manet and Morisot.
Did she have children?
Yes, one daughter, Julie Manet, who became a painter and diarist.
How did she die?
Of pneumonia in 1895, at 54, caught while nursing her sick daughter.
Her death certificate said no profession
When Morisot died in 1895, her death record listed her as having no profession, though she had exhibited with the Impressionists for over twenty years.
A founder of the movement was officially nobody. That single blank line says everything about what she was up against, and how far her reputation has traveled since.