MUSÉE MARMOTTAN MONET PA R I S Musée Marmottan Monet Press dossier – February 2012 8 March – 1 July 2012 Media relations Agence Catherine Dantan Cathia Chabre 7, rue Charles V – 75004 Paris Tel. : 01 40 21 05 15 [email protected]www.catherine-dantan.fr (1841-1895)
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Musée MarMottan MonetP A R I S
Musée Marmottan Monet
Press dossier – February 2012
8 March – 1 July 2012Media relations
Agence Catherine DantanCathia Chabre7, rue Charles V – 75004 ParisTel. : 01 40 21 05 15 [email protected] www.catherine-dantan.fr
(1841-1895)
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012 02
contents
03 Press release
05 Foreword by Jacques Taddei, Director, Musée Marmottan Monet
06 Berthe Morisot the Impressionist
08 Exhibition itinerary
11 Selected works
19 Biographical outline
22 Press visuals
23 Publications exploring Berthe Morisot’s life and work
24 Musical evenings
25 Practical information
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012
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From 8 March to 1 July 2012, the Musée Marmottan presents the first major retrospective
of the work of Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) to be held in Paris for almost half a century.
One hundred and fifty paintings, pastels, watercolours and drawings in red chalk and
charcoal, from museums and private collections all over the world, retrace the career of the
Impressionist movement’s best-known woman painter. Works selected for the exhibition
cover the whole of Berthe Morisot’s artistic career, from her earliest works c. 1860, to her
untimely death at the age of 54, in 1895.
The exhibition opens with an exceptional group of self-portraits, and portraits of Morisot
by Edouard Manet (the celebrated painter of Olympia was her brother-in-law). As a founder
member of the Impressionist group, and a leading figure in Paris’s artistic and literary
circles, Berthe Morisot was also a close friend and associate of Degas, Renoir, Monet, and
the poet Stéphane Mallarmé.
Berthe Morisot’s artistic training, in company with her sister Edma, is captured in the latter’s
portrait of Berthe, the sisters’ copies of Veronese painted in the Louvre under the direction
of their art master Joseph Guichard, and the View of Gardens of the Villa d’Este in Tivoli
by Jean-Baptiste Corot (with whom Berthe later studied). Edma was Berthe’s painting
companion until 1869, and her favourite model from 1869 to 1873. Edma abandoned
painting after her marriage, and Berthe continued alone, pursuing her career as a leading
member of the Impressionist group.
At the first Impressionist exhibition, held at the gallery of Paris photographer Nadar in
1874, Berthe Morisot’s work stood out for its feminine subject-matter and delicate style,
and her skill in transcribing the limpid atmosphere and light touch of watercolour in her
oil paintings, giving her work a particular freshness.
From 1873-4 onwards, cousins, friends and professional models posed for portraits show-
ing women dressed, or dressing, for the ball – including Morisot’s last studies in black –
or intimate scenes of everyday life revealing the evolution of the artist’s palette towards
more pastel hues, prompting comparisons with Watteau, Bonington and Fragonard.
Her daughter Julie, born in 1878, naturally became Berthe Morisot’s favourite model, and
the subject of fifteen paintings executed between 1882 and 1888, forming the centrepiece
of the exhibition. Beyond Morisot’s fascination for the theme of childhood, the paintings
testify to the brilliance of her mature style: colours, handling and painterly effects embody
‘Impressionism par excellence’.
press release
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012 04
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The final part of the exhibition is divided into two sections, one devoted to landscape
– a subject treated by Berthe Morisot throughout her life, and the genre of choice for her
late experiments in the dissolution of form, c.1894-95 – the other, to Berthe’s three ver-
sions of the Cerisier (‘Cherry Tree’) and the Petite Bergère allongée (‘Young shepherdess
reclining’) and the last portraits of Julie, works underscoring Berthe Morisot’s late but key
interest in large-scale compositions and – from 1885 onwards – in drawing. In this closing
section, landscapes bordering on abstraction face contemporary portraits captured in
clean, delicate outlines, each echoing the other and illustrating the rich diversity of artistic
experimentation (drawing, and the dissolution of form) with which Morisot engaged in
her last years.
The exhibition layout takes a fresh look at the work of Berthe Morisot. More than a painter
of women and children, a self-conscious bridge between the painting of the 18th and 19th
centuries, the exhibition invites us to see in her one of the Impressionist movement’s most
innovative, least dogmatic artists – the only member of the group to identify and explore
the link between Renoir’s drawings and the dissolution of form achieved later, by Monet.
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012
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For over half a century, the Musée Marmottan has been home to one of the world’s most
important collections of Impressionist paintings, and a key institution for the study of
the movement, thanks to legacies and gifts from the friends and families of the painters
themselves.
Victorine Donop de Monchy, the daughter of Georges de Bellio – a doctor, collector and
friend of the Impressionists – set the ball rolling with a bequest of some of the universally-
acknowledged masterpieces of modern painting, including Claude Monet’s Impression,
soleil levant (‘Impression, sunrise’) and Berthe Morisot’s Au bal (‘At the ball’), one of her
best-known and finest works.
In 1966, Michel Monet bequeathed his private collection of works inherited from his father,
bringing one hundred paintings by the founding father of Impressionism to the museum.
In the 1990s, Berthe Morisot’s descendants showed the same generosity:
In 1993, Annie Rouart, wife of Denis Rouart, Berthe Morisot’s grandson, created the Denis
and Annie Rouart Foundation for their private collection of over 150 artworks, now housed
at the museum, almost half by Berthe Morisot.
Three years later, in 1996, Thérèse Rouart, wife of Julien Rouart – another grandson of the
artist – followed the example with a bequest of three works by Berthe Morisot, and pieces
of furniture once belonging to the artist.
With 25 paintings and 50 drawings, the Musée Marmottan holds the world’s biggest public
collection of work by Berthe Morisot. The museum also holds the artist’s invaluable cor-
respondence, and a number of sketchbooks of vital importance for the study of her work.
Fifteen years after a major exhibition of this unique legacy, the Musée Marmottan is organiz-
ing a long-awaited retrospective of Berthe Morisot’s work, the first in Paris since 1941.
This event would not have been possible without the involvement and generosity of the
artist’s family, to whom I express my warmest gratitude. I should also like to thank the many
participating museums and collectors around the world for their vital support. Without
them, we would not have been able to gather together the 150 works presented here today.
As a member of the Institut de France, and director of the museum, I cannot end without
expressing my great pleasure at the inclusion in the exhibition catalogue of texts by Paul
Valéry and Jean-Marie Rouart, both distinguished members of the Académie Française.
Jacques Taddei
Member of the Institut Français.
Director, Musée Marmottan Monet
foreword by jacques taddei director of the musée marmottan monet
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012
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berthe morisot the impressionist
‘The fact that the Impressionist group included a woman among its ranks from the outset
is seen today as symbolic, bearing witness to the painters’ embrace of a revolution that was
not confined to the world of painting, but also a sign of a much wider evolution in society
as a whole. Throughout her life, with each new work, each new exhibition, the Impression-
ists considered Berthe Morisot their equal, and her paintings were greatly appreciated by
every member of the group.’ Jean-Dominique Rey, Berthe Morisot, the Beautiful Painter,
Flammarion, 2010, trans. Louise Rogers Lalaurie.
Berthe Morisot is an exceptional figure – an artist who, at the end of the 19th century,
succeeded in reconciling the life of a society lady, wife and mother with a career as an
avant-garde painter (at a time when women were not yet admitted as students to the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts), and who achieved a distinguished reputation as a leading figure in
the Impressionist movement.
Berthe Morisot was born in Bourges, on January 14, 1841. The daughter of the local prefect
(the highest-ranking public servant in the French regions), she was born into a bourgeois,
intellectual family, and studied the piano and drawing with her sister Edma. After a brief
period studying with Geoffroy-Alphonse Chocarne, she studied drawing and colour with
Joseph Guichard, and registered as a copyist at the Louvre to complete her classical art
training. Corot and Oudinot introduced her to painting out of doors – a new approach
which she found especially interesting.
Her meeting with Edouard Manet in 1868 marked a turning point in her life and career.
Berthe Morisot some became one of Manet’s favourite models (Berthe Morisot reclining,
Musée Marmottan Monet). In particular, she posed for two paintings – The Balcony, and
Le repos (‘At rest’), which caused a scandal at the Paris Salon. Undeterred, the young woman
went on to exhibit her own paintings at the Salon, beginning in 1864. Manet – the painter
of the celebrated, equally scandalous Olympia – introduced Berthe Morisot to a new circle,
eager to promote a new kind of painting. Degas, Fantin-Latour, Puvis de Chavannes,
Stevens, Carolus Duran, Jules and Charles Ferry, the composer Rossini, and the painter
Léon Riesener – a cousin of Delacroix – became regulars at Madame Morisot’s Tuesday
salon, and privileged witnesses to the progress of her daughter Berthe, who found encour-
agement in her determination to create a truly distinctive body of work.
A few months before Berthe’s marriage to Manet’s brother Eugène on December 22, 1874,
Degas – a regular at Madame Morisot’s salon – wrote to invite Berthe to take part in the first
Impressionist exhibition: ‘[…] Mlle Berthe Morisot’s reputation and talent are too much
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012 07
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a part of our endeavor to leave her out.’ Berthe Morisot accepted the invitation, the only
woman artist in the show. Turning her back on the official Paris Salon for good, she joined
her destiny with that of Monet, Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro. With the exception of the fourth
Impressionist exhibition, held shortly after the birth of her daughter Julie (1878-1966),
Berthe Morisot took part in every one of the group’s shows. From 1874 to 1886, the date
of the last Impressionist exhibition, she exhibited nowhere else, establishing herself as
one of the most dedicated members of the group, and the patron of the 1882 and 1886
exhibitions, when she was one of the few Impressionists to agree to have her work shown
alongside Seurat and Signac.
Following Edouard Manet’s death in 1883, Berthe’s Impressionist colleagues Degas, Renoir,
and Monet, and the Symbolist poet Mallarmé formed an intimate circle – a much-loved
extended ‘family’ – gathering for Thursday dinners (beginning in 1886) at the house she
had just built with her husband Eugène on Rue de Villejust in Paris.
In 1892, Berthe Morisot held her first solo exhibition at Galerie Boussod et Valadon – the
only such event held during her lifetime. In 1894, the French State acquired her painting
Jeune Femme en toilette de bal (‘Young woman dressed for a ball’, Paris, Musée d’Orsay)
at the Duret Collection sale, taking Berthe Morisot into the national collection, at the Musée
de Luxembourg, during her own lifetime. In 1895, Berthe Morisot died suddenly of a lung
infection at the age of 54. Her daughter Julie, and her friends Degas, Renoir, Monet and
Mallarmé organized a retrospective of her work one year later, celebrating the woman
who was both Manet’s muse, and a foremost Impressionist in her own right.
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012
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IV
Berthe Morisot: painter and muse
Fittingly for an exhibition devoted to a woman who was the muse of Edouard Manet
(from 1863 to 1874), the itinerary begins with an exceptional collection of self-portraits
(Self-portrait, 1885, and Portrait of Berthe Morisot and her Daughter, 1885; Self-portrait with
Julie, 1887) and portraits of Berthe Morisot by Edouard Manet (Berthe Morisot with a posy
of violets, 1872; Berthe Morisot reclining, 1873), and Marcelin Desboutin. Berthe married
Manet’s brother Eugène, becoming a leading figure in the Impressionist movement, and
a close friend of Degas, Renoir, Monet and Mallarmé.
Artistic training
At a time when women were not allowed to enroll at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the young
Berthe Morisot took private classes in painting, first (for a short time) with Chocarne, and
later with Guichard, who provided a classical artistic education and enrolled his pupil as
a copyist at the Louvre, where she copied works by Veronese under his instruction (Calvary,
1858; The Meat at the House of Simon, 1860). Recognising in her an artist destined for a
professional career, Guichard recommended his pupil to Corot (whose View of Gardens
of the Villa d’Este in Tivoli Morisot copied in 1863). Corot introduced Morisot to painting
out of doors, which she loved.
From 1857 to 1864, Berthe Morisot studied painting in the company of her sister Edma,
sharing a passionate enthusiasm for art, and an intimate bond. Equally talented, the
desmoiselles Morisot made their Salon début in 1864. Shortly after, Edma painted Berthe
in the act of painting – a subject never attempted by Manet, or any other artist.
Berthe Morisot, her sisters and the ‘ladies of the Grand-Rue’ (1869-1878)
Edma married Adolphe Pontillon in 1869, left Paris for Lorient on the Breton coast, and gave
up her painting career. Perhaps as a way of overcoming their separation, and keeping
alive her sister’s association with the art of painting, Berthe Morisot made Edma her chief
model, from 1869 to 1873, depicting her in numerous works, sometimes alone (Portrait of
Mme Pontillon, 1869, Reading, 1873) and sometimes with her two small daughters, Blanche
and Jeanne (Lilacs at Maurecourt, 1874). Early in her career, Berthe Morisot’s palette was
largely influenced by Manet, whom she met at the Louvre in 1868, becoming his favourite
model. Her interest in the depiction of light and effects of transparency drew her closer to
the work of Monet and Renoir, however, and she exhibited with the Impressionist group,
at Degas’s invitation, from 1874.
exhibition itinerary
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In 1873-4, with her sister Edma living in Brittany, Berthe sought new sitters in her Parisian
cousins (Portrait of Mme Boursier, 1873), friends (Portrait of Mme Hubard, 1874) and pro-
fessional models, posing for portraits in formal ball dress (Le Bal, 1875; The Black Corsage,
1878 – her last studies in black) or intimist scenes (Before the mirror / Devant la psyché,
1876) revealing the evolution of Berthe Morisot’s palette towards more pastel hues, drawing
comparisons with Watteau, Bonington and Fragonard).
The heart of ImpressionismJulie Manet – Young girls out of doors (1878-1889)
Julie, born in 1878, naturally became Berthe Morisot’s favourite model.
Fifteen paintings and watercolours executed between 1882 and 1888 form the centerpiece
of the exhibition. Julie is seen with her father Eugène (Eugène Manet and his daughter in
the garden at Bougival, 1881), her nurse Pasie (The Fable, 1883), playing with her friend
Marthe (Children beside a pool, 1886), her cousin Jeannie (The Piano, 1888) or alone (Little
girl in a blue jersey, 1886).
During the same period, Berthe Morisot pursued her passion for painting figures out of
doors, inviting young women to pose in the Bois de Boulogne (Summer’s Day, 1879), at her
holiday home in Bougival (Pasie sewing in the garden, 1881-2), or the garden of the home
she had built with her husband on Rue de Villejust in Paris’s 16th arrondissement (Woman
in a garden, 1882-3).
Beyond their subject-matter, this group of paintings testifies to the brilliance of Morisot’s
mature style: her pastel colours, free handling and effects of transparency embody the
essence of ‘Impressionism par excellence’.
Landscapes (1871-1895)
Berthe Morisot’s landscape paintings are less well-known, although she dedicated herself
to the genre throughout her life, and took care to represent this aspect of her work at each
of the Impressionist exhibitions. Painted close to home in the Bois de Boulogne, or on
trips to Normandy, Bougival, Nice, Le Mesnil or Brittany, for example, the paintings
evoke the places she visited and loved, retracing her life and the evolution of her art from
1871 to 1895.
As pretexts for Berthe Morisot’s pivotal study of the reflections of light on water, The
Harbour in Nice and The Seine at Bougival are works in the purest Impressionist vein (like
The Garden at Bougival or Hollyhocks) to which Berthe brought her own, highly personal,
poetic approach.
In the late 1880s, landscape become the genre of choice for her experiments in the dis-
solution of form. Her late views of the Bois de Boulogne border on abstraction. Inspired
by photography and the contemporary craze for japonisme, they combine tightly-framed,
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012 10
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close-up compositions with a tendency to monochrome, an absence of perspective and
noticeably free handling. As such, they anticipate in many ways the experiments pursued
by Monet twenty years later.
Large-scale compositions (1890-1895)
Contrasting with the landscapes, and especially with Berthe Morisot’s non-figurative
experiments of 1894-5, the exhibition presents an exceptional group of large-sale compo-
sitions executed in 1891. The three versions of The Cherry Tree, showing Julie and her
cousin Jeannie picking fruit in the garden at Mézy, and the variations of the Young shep-
herdess reclining – some clothed, some nude – are shown together here for the first time
in a retrospective of Morisot’s work. The paintings demonstrate Morisot’s interest in deco-
rative painting in her later years, and the essential role of drawing in her work – a passion
she shared with her friend Renoir, beginning in 1885.
The last portraits of Julie are in very much the same vein, showing her as an adolescent,
playing the violin in the family apartment on Rue de Weber, where she moved with her
mother in 1892, or – in another composition – with Laertes, her pet greyhound, a gift from
Mallarmé, who was soon to become her guardian.
The exhibition closes with a painting of Julie rêveuse (‘Julie daydreaming’) – one of
Morisot’s most Renoir-esque portraits – and a vigourously-sketched depiction of the Bois
de Boulogne. Begun in 1893, just a few months apart, and shown here facing each other,
the works illustrate Morisot’s late experiments in painting, and her exploration – more
than by any other artist – of the transition from Renoir to the dissolution of form achieved
two decades later, by Monet.
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Commentaries on all works in the exhibition are included in the catalogue: Berthe Morisot
(1841-1895), Editions Hazan.
Édouard Manet (1832–1883), Berthe Morisot Reclining (Portrait de Berthe Morisot étendue), 1873
Oil on canvas, 26 x 34 cm (10¼ x 13½ in.) – Signed and date upper right: Manet 1873
During her first stay in Nice with her daughter, Morisot executed roughly ten paintings, three
of which were shown at the seventh Impressionist exhibition. Two of those three were these
similarly sized views of the port. In order to get closer to her subject and to avoid setting her
easel on a dock crowded with onlookers, Morisot had herself taken right up to the ships. There
she could paint in peace, as Julie recorded in her diary: ‘Mama painted in a boat in the middle
of the harbour, and I watched her from the dock. I wanted to go with her in the boat but at the
same time I was very afraid.’
Rotating the format of these two canvases, Morisot presented two very different points of view.
The work now in the Musée Marmottan Monet allots nearly two-thirds of the canvas to the
watery element, opening onto the villas overlooking the port; the other one, is divided into two
registers of equal dimensions, occupied respectively by a tangle of ships and by the reflection
of a fishing boat set on the middle line.
Done with light, swift brushwork that allows glimpses of raw canvas, these views of the port of
Nice seem more like watercolours than oil paintings; conservative critics were inevitably
shocked by the unfinished look of the works on display. Described by Paul de Charry in his 1882
review as ‘something incomprehensible and mad’, the Cologne version was also disliked for its
heavy use of pure cobalt blue, a new chemical pigment that the Impressionists used liberally
and which many detractors felt was too aggressive on the eyes.
The palette used by Morisot in the southern French sunlight was nevertheless much more moder-
ate than the one used by her Impressionist colleagues who were discovering the Riviera during
that same period. It was on his return from Italy in 1882 that Renoir stayed in Provence for the
first time, halting at L’Estaque to visit and to work alongside Cézanne. The following year, taking
advantage of a new Paris–Marseille railway line that ran as far as Vintimille, Renoir dragged
Monet down to the Riviera. The pair returned enchanted, despite Monet’s initial reservations.
Thoroughly seduced, he returned in 1884 to set up his easel near the Franco-Italian border at
Bordighera, ‘a magical land’ that Monet said ‘called for a palette of diamonds and gemstones’.
Despite the blinding intensity of the Mediterranean sunlight (which tended to crush objects into
‘silhouettes not only black and white, but also blue, red, brown and purple’, as Cézanne wrote
to Pissarro regarding L’Estaque in 1876), Morisot remained faithful to the subtle colouring that
characterised not only her painting but also her personality. PP
Self-Portrait, 1885
Oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cm (24 x 19¾ in.) – Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet, Denis & Annie Rouart
Foundation, inv. 6022
This portrait was not conceived as a private work painted for the family, but rather as the self-
portrait of an artist who accepted her status and wanted to leave her image to posterity. As an
avid museum-goer, Morisot had visited the Uffizi in Florence in 1881, where she may have seen
the gallery of artists’ self-portraits. She certainly intended to place herself in this tradition for,
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012 16
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like many painters before her, she showed herself with brush and palette in hand, from the
waist up, facing forward with the steady, impassive gaze of the creative artist who sacrifices
everything for art. The woman who claimed in 1890 that ‘I’ve always had great difficulty detach-
ing myself from places, people and even animals, yet the funny thing is that people think I’m
insensitivity itself’ inevitably recognised herself in these portraits, whose apparent coldness is
merely a reflection of the demanding life of an artist.
When she began this self-portrait in 1885, Morisot probably had many examples in mind. It was
impossible not to think of Ingres and Delacroix, whose masterpieces she nostalgically recalled
in 1890. Indeed, it was Ingres’s Portrait of the Stamaty Family (1818, Louvre) that had awak-
ened her painter’s calling at the age of fourteen. Furthermore, her teacher, Joseph Guichard
(1806–1880) had been a student of Ingres and an admirer of Delacroix. Also, she was friendly
with the Riesener family, relatives of Delacroix, that glorious painter of the Apollo ceiling (1851)
in the Louvre.
So when painting her own self-portrait, how could Morisot forget the portrait by one of her
mentors? As a cultured woman she was surely familiar with Ingres’s already famous Self-Portrait,
Aged Twenty-Four (1804, Musée Condé, Chantilly). And at the Louvre in 1884, she could have
seen Delacroix’s Portrait in a Green Waistcoat (1837, acquired by the Louvre in 1872). Perhaps
the black scarf Morisot is wearing – rather than her usual choker – and the green highlight on her
lapel should be seen as allusions to the master’s cravat and green waistcoat, thus as a discreet
tribute to an artist who was foremost in her thoughts in 1885. Finally, maybe she was also
inspired by David’s Self-Portrait in the Louvre (1794, acquired by the Louvre in 1852), in which
the artist chose to present himself, as she did, in tones of beige, palette and brush in hand.
Whatever the case, Morisot is telling us that she is the peer of masters both old and modern
(she furthermore exhibited her self-portrait alongside those of Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin and
van Gogh at the Le Barc de Boutteville gallery in 1893). Julie was correct when she wrote in
her diary: ‘We see from this portrait the great artist she was, facing us directly with her grey-
ing hair, her neck wrapped in black, and wearing a yellowish bodice trimmed with flowers,
one of which is “like a badge of honour” according to Mallarmé, lending her what Monsieur de
Régnier felt was a knightly air.’ Morisot’s ‘badge’ reveals a certain sense of wit and noble spirit.
MMa
The Cherry Tree (Le Cerisier), 1891
Oil on canvas, 55 x 33 cm (21⅝ x 13 in.) – Private collection
The Cherry Tree (Le Cerisier), 1891
Oil on canvas, 146.5 x 89 cm (57⅝ x 35 in.) – Signature stamp lower right – Private collection
The Cherry Tree (Le Cerisier), 1891
Oil on canvas, 154 x 80 cm (60⅝ x 31½ in.) – Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet, Denis & Annie Rouart
Foundation, 1993, inv. 6020
This charming work, apparently done from life in the natural light of spring, is in fact the oppo-
site of what it appears to be. It was a long-meditated work, the product of multiple studies
requiring much effort and many changes of model. Furthermore, it was done during a time of
distress, the period between the illness and death of her husband, which the viewer of this gay
cherry-picking scene could hardly imagine.
‘What one doesn’t notice in a first glance at Berthe Morisot’s work is the strength that drives
her – a steady, focused strength channelled into expressiveness. It came at the cost of exhausting
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efforts that are masked by her art. The paradox of this work, which seems so spontaneous,
cheerful, sweet and harmonious, is that it was done in sorrowful circumstances, with a stub-
bornness and a despair hard to imagine if they weren’t confirmed by so many passages in the
notebooks and letters of an artist always dissatisfied with herself.’
Having begun with a drawing in coloured pencils done from life, the final work was completed
thanks to encouragement from Renoir after many studies of details and the overall scene. One
pastel focuses attention on the motif of the ladder in the trees, while an oil sketch was painted
in the garden prior to the execution of two larger versions done not outdoors but in the closed
atmosphere of Morisot’s studio in her rue Weber home. Here a professional model replaced
the artist’s daughter Julie, in what had been a double portrait with her niece in the foreground,
whose face was hidden. Red chalk and watercolour were also employed in an extended process
of composition that the apparent spontaneity of the final version hardly conveys. The quasi-
decorative ambitions behind this large work, designed to be exhibited – at Renoir’s suggestion
– at a Salon on the Champ-de-Mars, are fairly unique in Morisot’s œuvre. The graphic quality
of the composition orchestrated around the ladder and the supple brushwork (longer strokes,
albeit still lively, that define shapes and figures through colour) were based on those many
studies without losing the natural feel. This is perhaps the sole example in Morisot’s œuvre of
such thorough preparatory work, which nevertheless does not undermine its Impressionist
qualities. The final version remained in Morisot’s collection, although she nearly sold it to a
relative, Gabriel Thomas. The picture was admired by Mallarmé and Renoir at her retrospective
exhibition of 1896. Renoir probably felt affinities with Morisot’s success at combining draughts-
manship with colour, great rigour with naturalness, and a sense of intimacy with decorative
ambitions. EAS
Woods in Autumn (Sous-bois en automne), 1894
Oil on canvas, 43 x 33 cm (17 x 13 in.) – Signature stamp lower left – Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet,
Denis & Annie Rouart Foundation, inv. 6004
Tree and Lake in the Woods (Arbre et lac au bois) or Sunset on the Lake in the Bois
de Boulogne (Soleil couchant sur le lac du bois de Boulogne), 1894
Oil on canvas, 27 x 35 cm (10¾ x 13¾ in.) – Signature stamp lower left – Private collection
All her life Morisot lived in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris, right near the Bois de Boulogne.
These woods were an ideal place to work for an artist who was so enthusiastic about plein air
painting. In 1920 Jacques-Emile Blanche wrote a text that he dedicated to Julie Manet (Les
Dames de la Grande-Rue) in which he recalled the days when Berthe Morisot still lived with her
parents on rue Guichard ‘in the heart of old Passy’, the days when her first escapades took her
to the lake to do ‘a study of the swans, which she followed in a boat’. Paul Valéry, meanwhile,
wrote that the woods ‘provided [Morisot] with all the landscape she needed… Berthe was sat-
isfied with this poor Paris version of nature, for she took what it had to offer: an excuse for
exquisite paintings’.
It was in the Bois de Boulogne that Morisot first painted figures in outdoor settings, using profes-
sional models (Summer’s Day, cat. 26), followed by Julie and her nanny Pasie, several examples
of which are included here . Autonomous landscapes are rarer. The earliest views of the Bois
de Boulogne were painted in around 1884–86. Meanwhile, a significant series of small paintings
date from 1893–94, including the two here, Autumn in the Woods and Sunset on the Lake in the
Bois de Boulogne. MMa
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012 18
u selected works
Bois de Boulogne, 1893
Oil on canvas – 50 x 61 cm (19½ x 24 in.) – Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet, Denis & Annie Rouart
Foundation, inv. 6008
‘‘In the wood’, in front of the lake where you glimpse the island with its flowerbeds, the strollers
and the lane circling the lake with its bicycles, carriages, riders, pedestrians and mothers with their
children, set against a celestial blue sky,’ wrote Julie Manet in her diary, ‘stands Laertes on his hind
legs, being stroked by his mistress, also standing, dressed in black with a large muslin hat; the
grass is rather yellow, and a green tree trunk occupies the foreground. It’s a wonderful impression
of the woods in summer, of this garden that posed for Mama – she was its portraitist. This painting
was done from a sketch, very quickly.’ Known sketches include one watercolour and two drawings
in coloured pencils. The painting itself was done in the rue Weber apartment, where Morisot moved
after her husband died. In its swift execution, its lively, sketchy style, the marked tendency of
shapes to dissolve into one another, and its chromatic range and Japanese-type composition,
Bois de Boulogne is a harbinger of Morisot’s last landscapes with which it already shares a title.
After painting this work at the end of summer, in October 1893 Morisot undertook a very different
portrait of Julie, titled Julie Daydreaming (cat. 79). Unlike Bois de Boulogne, outlines are distinctly
drawn and shapes are maintained. What Julie described in her diary as a ‘very finished’ painting
in fact illustrates the artistic dialogue then underway between Morisot and Renoir (who also did a
portrait of Julie in 1894, now in the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris). Separated by just a few
months, Bois de Boulogne and Julie Daydreaming reflect the various approaches adopted by
Morisot in the 1890s. Tending towards abstraction on one hand, yet organised around draughts-
manship on the other, they reveal the constant creativity and open-mindedness of an artist who
stands as one of the most original practitioners of Impressionism. MMa
Julie Daydreaming (Julie rêveuse), 1894
Oil on canvas – 65 x 54 cm (25½ x 21¼ in.) – Private collection
This intimate, melancholy portrait was begun in the studio on rue Weber after the death of Julie’s
father, and was completed the very year that Morisot and her daughter posed for Renoir. Julie
herself commented, ‘I seem so sad in this graceful portrait, one senses the misfortune that struck
me so intensely, still so young.’ Her sorrowful reverie is particularly well expressed by her curled
pose, vacant gaze and pouting lips. The strong outlines – noted by all the critics at the 1896 exhibi-
tion – are reminiscent of Renoir’s technique and his own portraits of Julie, which underscore the
geometry of her face through round cheeks and lips countered by oblong, feline eyes. Going
beyond Renoir, Morisot possessed a special, long – almost languorous – brushstroke that outlined
her daughter’s figure and followed the line of her head in multiple waves, creating a kind of green
aura around her hair. In this respect the portrait perhaps projects an atypical, almost ‘Art Nouveau’
feel; indeed, it perhaps evokes the melancholy of someone in Paris in 1896 who attentively fol-
lowed the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists and who was also interested in auras and
melancholic beings, namely Edvard Munch. This similarity was certainly more than a coincidence,
reflecting an approach that was in the spirit of the times. EAS
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012 19
VI berthe morisot: biographical outline
1841 - Berthe Morisot is born in Bourges, the third daughter of Marie-Joséphine Cornélie Thomas (1819-1876) and Edme Tiburce Morisot (1806-1874), prefect of the French department of Cher.
- Two older sisters, Yves (1838-1893) and Edma (1839-1921); and a younger brother, Tiburce (1848-c.1930)
1841-1848 - The Morisot family settles in Limoges.
1852 - After a spell in Caen, the family moves permanently to Paris’s Passy neighbourhood, where Berthe was to spend much of her life.
- Music lessons with Stamaty fils.
1857 - Madame Morisot arranges drawing lessons for her daughters. Early classes with Chocarne, on Rue de Lille; then with the painter Joseph Guichard, a pupil of Ingres, who soon spots Edma’s and Berthe’s talent and predicts professional careers for the girls.
1858-1860 - Edma and Berthe, now copyists at the Louvre, meet Félix Bracquemond and Henri Fantin-Latour at the museum.
1860-1862 - On Guichard’s advice, the two sisters join the studio of Camille Corot, who introduces them to painting out of doors.
- The family spends the summer of 1861 at La Ville-d’Avray, near Corot’s home, where Berthe and Edma paint from life, out of doors.
1864 - The family moves to 16 Rue Franklin in Paris; several paintings by Berthe show the house’s drawing-room and terrace. On Tuesdays, Madame Morisot hosts her celebrated dinners, entertaining Jules Ferry, Carolus-Duran, and Rossini.
- Berthe and Edma make their début at the Paris Salon. - Several important meetings follow: the painter Léon Riesener, a pupil and cousin of Delacroix,
the Duchess of Castiglione Colonna (a sculptor under the pseudonym Marcello) and the sculptor Aimé Millet.
1865 - Monsieur Morisot builds a studio for his daughters in the garden of 16 Rue Franklin, destroyed later during the 1871 Siege of Paris. Berthe had no studio of her own again until 1891, but continued painting in her bedroom and drawing-room.
- The two sisters exhibit a second time at the Salon.
1866 et 1867 - Third and fourth appearances at the Salon. - In 1867, Berthe and Edma exhibit their work with the art dealer Cadart.
1868 - During a copying session at the Louvre, Fantin-Latour introduces Edma and Berthe to Edouard Manet. Berthe soon becomes one of his favourite models – the subject of ten portraits from 1868 to 1874. The families become friends: Tuesday dinners are held at the Morisots’, Thursday evenings at the Manets’, where Berthe meets Edgar Degas, Emile Zola, Puvis de Chavannes…
- The sisters exhibit again at the Salon.
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u berthe morisot: biographical outline
1896 - Edma marries the naval officer Adolphe Pontillon and moves to Lorient. The separation is painful for both sisters. Edma gives up painting, but becomes Berthe’s favourite model, from 1869 to 1871
1870-1871 - Berthe’s health is permanently affected by the hardships of the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune.
1872 - Berthe exhibits a large pastel of Edma (Portrait of Mme Montillon) at the Salon. - On July 10, Berthe sells a painting and three watercolours to the gallerist Durand-Ruel.
1873 - Final appearance at the Salon.- The family moves once again, to 7 Rue Guichard in Passy. Berthe paints her neighbours’ portraits, and pictures of Edma and her children, whom she joins for the holidays (eg. L’Ombrelle, ‘The Parasol’).
1874 - From April 15 to May 15, Berthe Morisot takes part in the first Impressionist exhibition at the studio of Paris photographer Nadar, showing nine canvases including seven of Edma. She is the only woman to take part in the exhibition.
- On 22 December, Berthe marries Edouard Manet’s brother Eugène, whom she met during the summer.
1875 - On March24, Berthe Morisot, Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley organize a public sale of their work at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. Berthe’s painting Intérieur achieves the highest sale price (480 francs), but the sale is a commercial failure and is not repeated.
- Honeymoon on the Isle of Wight and in London; Berthe paints numerous canvases and watercolours.
1876 - Exhibits nineteen works at the second Impressionst exhibition at Galerie Durand-Ruel.
1877 - Exhibits twelve works at the group’s third exhibition on Rue Le Peletier.
1878 - Birth of Julie Manet (1878-1966), on November 14. Berthe’s daughter becomes her favourite model.
1879 - For the only time in her life, Berthe does not take part in the (fourth) Impressionist exhibition, organised soon after Julie’s birth.
1880 - Exhibits fifteen works at the fifth Impressionist exhibition on Rue des Pyramides.
1881 - Exhibits seven works at the sixth Impressionist exhibition on Boulevard des Capucines. Critics hail Berthe as one of the movement’s outstanding exponents; her pastel colour palette draws comparisons to Fragonard and Watteau.
- With Eugène Manet, Berthe buys a plot of land on Rue de Villejust in Paris (now Rue Paul Valéry), where they build an apartment block, to be partly rented and partly occupied by the family.
1882 - In March, Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet finance the seventh Impressionist exhibition on Rue St Honoré, including twelve works by Berthe.
1883 - In London, Berthe presents three pictures at the Impressionist exhibition organised by Durand-Ruel.
- Death of Edouard Manet, on April 30.- Work on Rue de Villejust is completed. Eugène Manet and Berthe move to the new building with Madame Auguste Manet, who is gravely ill.
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012 21
1884 - A posthumous exhibition of Manet’s work opens on January 4 at the Beaux-Arts, organized in large part by Eugène Manet and Berthe Morisot.
- Through Mallarmé, Berthe Morisot becomes more closely acquainted with Monet.
1885 - Berthe Morisot organises regular Thursday soirées at Rue de Villejust: Mallarmé, Degas, Renoir and Monet are frequent guests, as members of Morisot’s extended ‘family’ of intimate friends.
1886 - Berthe presents nine works in New York at an Impressionist exhibition organised by Durand-Ruel.
- The last Impressionist exhibition in Paris is held from May 15 to June 15, on Rue Lafitte. Berthe exhibits eleven works, and finances the exhibition with Degas, Henri Rouart and Mary Cassat.
1887 - Exhibits with the Groupe des XX in Brussels, with Paul Signac, Georges Seurat and others.- Presents seven canvases at the Exposition International, with Georges Petit. - At Mallarmé’s request, Berthe learns print-making to illustrate a collection of poems, Le Tiroir de Laque (‘The Lacquered Drawer’).
- Renoir paints a portrait of Julie, known as L’Enfant au Chat (‘Child with a Cat’).
1888-1891 - Berthe Morisot exhibits extensively in Paris and New York.
1892 - Death of Eugène Manet on April 13.- First solo exhibition of Berthe Morisot’s work, from May 26 to June 18 at Galerie Boussod
et Valadon. The show features forty paintings and graphic works. The catalogue is prefaced by the journalist and art critic Gustave Geoffroy.
1893 - Julie Manet begins her private journal, during a stay with Mallarmé. - On October 30, Julie describes a visit to Giverny with her mother, during which Monet
shows them twenty-six Cathedral paintings.
1894 - Through Mallarmé, the French State acquires Berthe’s painting Jeune Femme en tenue de bal (‘Young woman dressed for the ball’). The work enters the collection of the Musée de Luxembourg.
- Renoir paints a portrait of Berthe with her daughter Julie.
1895 - While nursing Julie, Berthe contrasts a lung infection and dies suddenly on March 2. She is buried in the Manet family vault at Passy cemetery in Paris on March 5.
1896 - Posthumous exhibition at Galerie Durand-Ruel from March 5 to March 21, organised by her friends Degas, Monet, Renoir and Mallarmé, assisted by Julie. The show includes
380 paintings by Berthe Morisot – the biggest-ever exhibition of her work.
u berthe morisot: biographical outline
Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot Press dossier – February 2012 22
VII press visualsThese visuals are available for use in connection with articles promoting the exhibition
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) at the Musée Marmottan Monet from March 8 to July 1, 2012.
All visuals must be used with their accompanying captions and credits.
Berthe Morisot, La Lecture or L’Ombrelle verte, c.1873 – Oil on canvas – 46 x 71.8 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art – Gift of the Hanna Fund 1950.89