THE MASTERPIECES OF THE LEON-DIERX ART GALLERY : Berthe MORISOT
Berthe MORISOT
Bourges, 14 January 1841 – Paris, 2 March 1895
The daughter of a Prefect (high-level French civil-servant), Berthe Morisot received an excellent artistic education and was supported during her studies by her mother. Very quickly, Berthe moved away from the academic teaching she received and learned to paint in the open air with Camille Corot. From her contact with Corot, she retained the use of light tones and visible brush strokes.
At the same time, she would visit the Louvre, copying works by the great masters. In 1868, she met Edouard Manet there. He was one of the main innovative artists of the mid 19th century and he later became her brother-in-law in 1874. She was his model for Le Balcon (The Balcony), now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and he painted a total of ten portraits of her.
From 1864, she exhibited at the Salon. In the 1870s, Berthe Morisot became an important figure in the Parisian artistic circles. From 1874 to 1886, she took part in Impressionist exhibitions, sometimes being considered as the most innovative painter of the group. She was acquainted with Zola, Mallarme, Monet, Degas and Renoir, whose style she ended up adopting, with very fluid brushstrokes and a warm contrasting pallet.
Berthe Morisot was less eclectic than her masculine artist friends when it came to the subjects of her paintings. However, she treated with brio and a distinct style all the traditional topics responding to bourgeois tastes of the period.
Jeune fille au divan (Young girl reclining on a sofa), Berthe MORISOT
1893
Oil on canvas
45,9 x 55,1 cm
Inv 1947.01.82
Lucien Vollard donation
During the summer of 1893, Berthe Morisot borrowed one of Renoir’s models, asking her to pose reclining on an Empire-style day-bed. Morisot treated the subject of a woman on a couch from different viewpoints: close to the model for a head-and-shoulders portrait or a reversed viewpoint, with the dressing table or vase painted in greater or lesser detail.
She used pastels, pencil and paint, but also dry point for etchings. The subject was very much in fashion, a reminder of the portrait of Madame Récamier painted by David, but presented in a far less stilted manner. The young woman here is daydreaming, lost in her thoughts.
The painted version hanging in the art gallery, with its linear coloured brushstrokes of bright half-tones, is a modern composition where the limits between the interior and exterior are blurred, producing a “vaporous painting” (Degas). The model, the furniture and the vase: everything appears suspended and unstable.
Among the Impressionists, Berthe Morisot stands out for her specific and unique style with blurred forms, unfinished merely suggestive brushstrokes, as well as her use of pale colours.
Berthe Morisot, Femme au repos, vers 1888, gravure, coll. MLD
