Berthie Morisot

The Forgotten Impressionist

Berthie Morisot was born in 1841, in Paris, France. As she grew up

she found talent in painting and artistry. The people Berthie Morisot saw

every day such as members of her family are the people who appear in

nearly all of her paintings. Early works feature her mother and her sister

Edma. Later, she painted her husband Eugene Manet and their young

daughter Julie. Through the years, Julie became her mother's favorite model.

She also painted many of the beautiful landscape of France. All of her

paintings were produced with oil and watercolor paintings. In most of

Berthie's pictures there was a lot of negative space. Negative space was

important because it helped bring out the center or most important part of

her paintings. Solid figures balanced by areas of negative space is really

what I mean. Most her work also included quick loose brightly colored

strokes. Many called them 'unfinished sketches' which reflected the modern

art work of today. In her paintings light value, streaks, dots and dashes

were all important and stressed a lot in her paintings. She was influenced by

Camille Coronet and Edouard Manet. Morisot was an impressionist painter

which meant she was involved in impressionism which was a movement in

late 19th-century France in reaction to people getting bored of painting the

same old boring subjects and topics. The impressionist movement is often

considered to mark the beginning of the modern period in art and, to a lesser

degree, in music.

Berthie Morisot was a woman and at that point in time women were

not supported very much. There was a stereotypical view much like today

that women were just supposed to cook, clean, and do things around the

house. They were not supposed to be artists or painters at least that was the

opinion of most men. Even Edouard Manet, an artist that influenced

Morisot once said, "This woman's work is exceptional. Too bad she's not a

man!" So Morisot was considered radical both because she was a woman

and because she was a woman who painted professionally. Many of her

paintings were considered radical because she painted modern reversals like

a husband taking care of a kid for example. She rebelled and opened up

exhibits. Bethie Morisot died in 1895.