Essay, Research Paper: Berthie Morisot

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.