Collection of the best paintings by Berthe Morisot, the French Impressionist woman painter.
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Music: “Dreaming” by Amy Beach (1867 - 1944). Alan Feinberg, piano.
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)
Born in Bourges, France on January 14, 1841 to an upper middle-class family, Berthe Morisot was a French painter who would become an integral part of the Impressionist circle. Granddaughter of the Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Morisot decided to pursue a career as an artist and began training under well-respected artists such as Joseph Guichard and Camille Corot.
In 1864, at the age of twenty-three, Morisot exhibited her work for the first time at the Salon de Paris and would continue to participate in the Salon until 1868, receiving encouraging reviews. By 1868, fellow artist Henri Fantin-Latour introduced Morisot to Édouard Manet, and the two became close friends. They would continue to mutually advise and support each other throughout their careers, and in 1874 Morisot married Manet’s brother, Eugène.
Morisot was an integral member of the artists who founded the Impressionist exhibitions in the 1870’s and in 1874, Morisot resolutely abandoned Salon exhibitions, exclusively showing her works in the Impressionist exhibitions of the 1870’s and 1880’s. Although she never achieved financial independence with her artwork, she outsold Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley in a March 1875 auction at Hôtel Drouot.
Like her female contemporaries, Morisot was prohibited from the majority of public spaces and was confined to the sites prescribed by her class and gender. For this reason, most subjects of Morisot’s paintings were members of her family in domestic settings. Her deft use of luminous color and the hurried quality of her brushstrokes reveal an instinctive sensibility to the principles that defined the Impressionist movement.
(Excerpt from Sotheby’s biography)
List of Paintings:
Summer’s Day / Jour d'eté 1879 (National Gallery, London)
After Luncheon / Après le déjeuner 1881 (Private collection)
The Cradle / Le Berceau 1872 (Musée d’Orsay)
Woman and Child on a Balcony / Femme et enfant au balcon 1882 (Private collection)
Hide and Seek / Cache-Cache 1873 (Bellagio Gallery of Fine Arts, USA)
The Thames 1875 (Museum Barberini Potsdam)
Woman at Her Toilette / Femme à sa toilette 1875-1880 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Eugène Manet and His Daughter at Bougival / Eugène Manet et sa fille dans le jardin de Bougival 1881 (Musée Marmottan Monet)
In the Veranda / Dans la véranda 1884 (Private Collection)
Young Woman by a Window / Jeune femme assise devant la fenêtre, dit l’Été 1879 (Musée Fabre, Montpellier)
The Harbor at Lorient / Vue du petit port de Lorient 1869 (National Gallery, Washington)
Young Woman Seated on a Sofa 1879 (Metropolitan)
Woman Wearing Gloves (The Parisienne) 1885 (Private collection)
Young Woman Watering a Shrub / Jeune femme arrosant un arbuste 1883 (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)
The Garden at Bougival / Le jardin à Bougival 1884 (Musée Marmottan Monet)
Young Woman / Jeune femme 1871 (Museum of Fine Arts. Huston)
Woman with a Fan / Femme à l’éventail 1876 (Private collection)
The Harbour at Cherbourg / Le port de Cherbourg 1871 (Yale University Art Gallery)
Rosbras, Brittany 1867 (Private collection)
Woman in Black (Before Theatre) / Femme en noir (Avant le théâtre) 1875 (Private collection)
Lucy Léon at the Piano 1892 (Private collection)
In the Bois de Boulogne 1880 (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm)
Young Girl in a Ball Gown / Jeune femme en toilette de bal 1879 (Musée d’Orsay)
At the Ball / Au bal 1875 (Musée Marmottan Monet)
Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight / Eugène Manet à l’île de Wight 1875 (Musée Marmottan Monet)
Young Girl with Basket / Jeune fille au panier 1892 (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
Cottage Interior 1886 (Musée d’Ixelles)
The Cheval-Glass (Psyché Mirror) / Le miroir psyché 1876 (Thyssen-Bornemisza)
View of Paris from the Trocadero / Vue de Paris hauteurs du Trocadéro (Santa Barbara Museum of Art)1871-73
In a Park / Dans le parc 1874 (Petit Palais, Paris)
