dp_berthe_morisot_anglais

Musée Marmottan Monet Press dossier – February 2012

(1841-1895)

8 March – 1 July 2012 Media relations Agence Catherine Dantan Cathia Chabre 7, rue Charles V – 75004 Paris Tel. : 01 40 21 05 15 cathia@catherine-dantan.fr www.catherine-dantan.fr

M usée M armot tan M onet P A R I S

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Press release

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Foreword by Jacques Taddei, Director, Musée Marmottan Monet

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Berthe Morisot the Impressionist

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Exhibition itinerary

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Selected works

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Biographical outline

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Press visuals

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Publications exploring Berthe Morisot’s life and work

Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot

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Musical evenings

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Practical information

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press release

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 showing 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’.

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press release 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 versions 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.

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foreword by jacques taddei director of the musée marmottan monet 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 universallyacknowledged 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 correspondence, 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 organizing 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

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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 Impressionists 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 encouragement 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

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berthe morisot the impressionist 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.

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exhibition itinerary

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.

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exhibition itinerary 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 professional 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 Impressionism Julie 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 dissolution 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,

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exhibition itinerary 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 compositions 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 shepherdess 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 decorative 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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selected works

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 Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet, Denis & Annie Rouart Foundation, inv. 6086 Together with Berthe Morisot with a Fan (Berthe Morisot à l’éventail, 1874, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille), this little painting is one of only two portraits by Manet that Morisot owned. Both works were mentioned in the ‘Historique des tableaux d’Éd. Manet’ that Morisot drew up in one of her notebooks in around 1885–86. Number ten in this brief inventory described a ‘head-and-shoulders portrait cut from a full-length portrait reclining on a sofa’. Étienne Moreau-Nélaton tried to describe the painting as Manet initially conceived it, discussing the reasons that led the artist to sacrifice part of his canvas. Morisot was ‘reclining on a sofa with one arm extended along the back of the settee, wearing the black dress that we have seen elsewhere, enlivened once again by white stockings and pink shoes. But once it was finished, a major mistake so troubled Manet that instead of correcting a hand he felt was too big, he slashed the work in an impulsive gesture and amputated the legs and one arm of the figure, keeping only the head and shoulders, the rest being mercilessly sacrificed.’

Even in its current dimensions, Berthe Morisot Reclining should not be considered a truncated painting or a fragment of a larger, no longer extant whole. Indeed, it is an autonomous work resulting from an intentional creative process that included cutting down the canvas itself – which he signed, dated and offered to his sitter, something Manet never did with unfinished work.

This intimate portrait with its amazing sense of presence reveals Morisot’s beauty and sensuality thanks to the artist’s total mastery (and perhaps passion). The boldness and intensity of Morisot’s gaze would captivate the likes of Baudelaire. As Paul Valéry pointed out, it was because ‘her eyes… were almost too huge and so powerfully dark that Manet… in order to record all their magnetic, mysterious power, painted them black instead of the greenish colour they really were’. This transformed Morisot, according to Jacques-Émile Blanche, into the ‘Goya element’ in Manet’s œuvre.

Morisot kept this portrait all her life. In 1890 she depicted it in Before the Mirror (cat. 66), and in 1893 it figured again in the background of Julie Playing the Violin (cat. 73). A photoengraving of this portrait also served as the frontispiece to the catalogue of her posthumous exhibition.

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The Green Parasol (L’Ombrelle verte) or Reading (La Lecture), 1873 Oil on canvas, 45.1 x 72.4 cm (18⅛ x 28¼ in.) – Signed lower right: Berthe Morisot Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, gift of the Hanna Fund, inv. 1950.89 Edma Morisot Pontillon gave up painting when she married and moved to Lorient. It was a wrench for her younger sister, Berthe, who lost a painting companion of more than ten years. From Paris, Berthe wrote letters full of news to Edma, describing the Salon of 1869 in the following terms:

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selected works ‘The great Bazille… is seeking what we have so often sought – to place a figure in an outdoor setting – and this time I think he has succeeded.’ Henceforth, every time they got together Berthe had Edma pose; if no longer her colleague, her sister thus became the protagonist of her œuvre.

She depicted Edma outdoors, in Lorient, Paris and Normandy, initially in watercolours and then in The Green Parasol, an oil that Charles Stuckey asserts was painted at Les Petites Dalles in 1873. Stuckey has stressed the importance of this work, which illustrates Morisot’s primary quest in the early 1870s, namely to establish a formal and chromatic balance based on repetitions of shapes (fan and parasol), textures (wildflowers and hat) and colours (the green of grass and ribbon). Exhibited at the first Impressionist show in 1874 under the title of Reading (number 105), this painting was noted by critic Jean Prouvaire. ‘Far from backstage scenes at the theatre, Mademoiselle Berthe Morisot leads us to meadows moistened by seaside dew. In both her watercolours and oils, she likes large lawns in which some woman sits, book in hand, with a child nearby. She sets the charming artifices of a Parisian lady against the charms of nature.’ In Charivari, however, Louis Leroy criticized the sketchiness of Morisot’s work: ‘Let’s talk about Mademoiselle Morizot [sic]! This young lady doesn’t bother to depict a mass of idle details.

When she has to paint a hand (La Lecture), she employs as many long brushstrokes as there are fingers, and the thing is done.’ Even Morisot’s former teacher, Joseph Guichard, worried in a letter to her mother that Berthe ‘wanted to express in oil what is the exclusive domain of watercolour’. Visitors to the first Impressionist exhibition could thereby observe, via Reading, the main characteristics of Morisot’s œuvre: a modern, feminine subject-matter, Impressionist brushwork, a luminous palette and transparent effects usually reserved for watercolours.

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Woman with a Fan (Femme à l’éventail) or At the Ball (Au bal), 1875 Oil on canvas, 62 x 52 cm (24⅜ x 20½ in.) – Signed lower right: Berthe Morisot Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet, gift of Victorine Donop de Monchy, 1940, inv. 4020 Exhibited at the Impressionist show of 1876, this painting reveals Morisot’s interest at that time in seated or head-and-shoulder portraits of female models, usually indoors. At the Ball, like the Musée d’Orsay’s Young Woman at a Ball (Jeune femme au bal) – done a few years later – and the Woman with a Fan (Femme à l’éventail) of 1876, is part of this evocation of a familiar world, one that was perhaps more conducive to the awakening of Morisot’s artistic personality. At the Ball was a testing ground that reveals Morisot’s experiments in the expressiveness of colour.

The repetition of a single motif – the bouquet of flowers in the background, the flowers in the hair, and the flower on the corsage – allowed her to weave a network of correspondences.

The garment, the fan (now in a private collection) and even the gloves, while they dot the canvas with tones of white, above all offer an excuse to evoke the material quality of the fabrics and to convey the transparency of the dress in contrast to the opacity of the gloves and the lightness of the fan.

It is perhaps this attention to the depiction of specifically feminine attributes – domestic interiors, fashionable dress, sitters in melancholic or dreamy poses – that led Albert Wolff to state in 1876: ‘There is also a woman in the group, as there is in all notorious gangs, for that matter; her name is Berthe Morisot and she is curious to observe. She maintains feminine grace amidst the excesses of a frenzied imagination.’ MMo

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selected works The Plain of Gennevilliers (La Plaine de Gennevilliers) or Hanging the Laundry Out to Dry (Percher de blanchisseuse), 1875 Oil on canvas, 33 x 40.6 cm (13 x 16 in.) – Signed lower left: Berthe Morisot – Washington, National Gallery of Art, collection of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon, inv. 1985.64.28 ‘I’ve just come from the plain of Gennevilliers, which I crossed from one end to the other, starting from Epinay,’ wrote Eugène Manet to Berthe Morisot in 1882. ‘Everything is blossoming and smells of spring. This plain is indeed pretty from all sides.’ Morisot knew these outskirts of Paris well, for her in-laws had a house there. She also liked this increasingly urbanised landscape when it was transfigured by the light of the first days of mild weather. In the spring of 1875 she did four similarly structured paintings of it during one stay shortly after her marriage: Little Mill at Gennevilliers (Le Petit Moulin à Gennevilliers, CMR 43, private collection), Landscape at Gennevilliers (cat. 13, CMR 44, private collection), In the Wheat Fields (Dans les blés, CMR 46, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and this painting of Hanging the Laundry Out to Dry. The artist adopted a somewhat low angle and placed the horizon line along the upper third of the painting, thereby increasing the apparent vastness of the plain. The compositions are organised on two registers, a primary one devoted to the fields and a smaller, crowning one that featured the cloud-studded sky typical of the greater Paris region. However, Hanging the Laundry Out to Dry differs from the other views of Gennevilliers in its light, varied palette, with whites, pinks and blues lighting up the picture. Applied in short strokes, these colours evoke rather than depict the hanging sheets and the dress of the laundress, whose mere presence lends life to the scene. Morisot was clearly fond of this painting, which she exhibited at the Impressionist show of 1876, where collector Georges de Bellio bought it. Indeed, in 1892 she asked to borrow the painting so that it could be included in the only solo show organised during her lifetime, at the Boussod et Valadon gallery. It was borrowed once again in 1896 for her posthumous exhibition. MMa

Before the Mirror (Devant la psyché), 1890 Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm (21⅝ x 18⅛ in.) – Signed lower right: B. Morisot – Martigny, Pierre Gianadda Foundation Collection Painting a nude at her toilet from the back without revealing her facial features in the mirror seemed particularly modern at the time, and probably reflected an artistic challenge: the reflection appears as a painting within the painting, and moreover alluded to other canvases such as Manet’s Berthe Morisot Reclining (Berthe Morisot étendue, cat. 3). Degas, like Manet, had painted reflections in a mirror, but the subject had rarely been applied to a woman seen from the back.

Critic Edmond Duranty had initiated the idea in 1876 – doing a portrait from the back was a modern motif that seemed to represent a particularly sharp break with tradition. While this type of subject was typical of Morisot, the handling reveals a development dating back a year. ‘In 1889, for Christmas, Julie received a box of coloured pencils as a gift, which gave Berthe the idea of using that technique. Once again, her work evolved thanks to her daughter; from that point onward, drawing became a crucial part of her work. The subjects for paintings were first worked out in various sketches in pencil or watercolour, then squared up. Between 1888 and 1891, her style changed more than it ever had before.’ Her brushstrokes lengthened, following volumes and enclosing outlines. Still basically swift and fragmented, her brushwork nevertheless adapted to a more uniform handling of body – Morisot managed to reconcile opposites by drawing in colour.

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selected works Summer’s Day (Jour d’été), 1879 Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 75.3 cm (18 x 29⅝ in.) – Signed lower right: Berthe Morisot – London, The National Gallery, bequest of M. Lane in 1917, inv. NG 3264 There is no need to identify the sitters in this painting, nor is there a need to know the location (even though it was exhibited at the 1880 Impressionist show under the title of The Lake in the Bois de Boulogne). Nor, finally, is there a need to define the action, to decide whether these two women are simply enjoying a boat ride or are travelling on the ferry to the islands of the lower lake. The only thing that mattered to the artist, who boarded the boat in order to paint her sitters from life, was the study of two figures seen outdoors, subject to the variations of summer light shimmering on the water.

Done in the summer of 1879, when Morisot was living near the lake, this canvas shows her commitment to Impressionism in terms of both subject-matter and handling. The latter is particularly lively here. Like her male colleagues, Morisot sought to convey the temporal aspect of the act of painting by leaving certain passages in a sketchy state – notably the bottom of the blue dress, done with just a few brushstrokes. Since the Impressionists established no hierarchy of forms, the figures are handled in the same way as the water of the lake, using rapid, zigzag brushstrokes all across the canvas. Such brushwork nevertheless plays a constructive role within the apparently chaotic evocation of the infinite variety of light by adding substantial density to this straightforward composition, one based on setting the figures along the diagonal gunwale of the boat while anchoring their faces on the green horizontal of the shore. PP

Eugène Manet and His Daughter at Bougival (Eugène Manet et sa fille dans le jardin de Bougival) or In the Country (A la campagne), 1881 Oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm (28¾ x 36¼ in.) – Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet, Denis & Annie Rouart Foundation, 1993, inv. 6018 ‘I’m somewhat flabbergasted that you say you took the canvas of you and Bibi, it seems absolutely silly to me. I beg you, take another look at it.… If my paintings are to be put on easels, that is to say very near [the viewer], then don’t put things that may appear grotesque.’ Those are the words that Morisot addressed in 1882 to her husband Eugène Manet, who was charged with setting up his wife’s work at the Impressionist exhibition. While the portrait of Eugène with his daughter in the garden at Bougival seemed inadequate in the eyes of the artist, some critics noticed it immediately.

‘Mademoiselle Berthe Morisot has always had a palette of exquisite finesse. But the draughtsmanship of this charming artist is truly becoming too imaginary. Her canvases are henceforth a delicious stew of colours.… The large figure bearing the number 92, titled In the Country, is the largest of her submissions.’ Morisot’s harmonious use of colour struck Armand Sylvestre when he reviewed this exhibition for the Chronique des arts et de la curiosité. Indeed, even though Eugène and little Julie are easily identifiable – the father is sitting on a bench with a construction set on his lap while his daughter plays with the pieces – the viewer’s eye is rapidly drawn to the colourful reverberations that punctuate the canvas. This impression is reinforced by the garden in the background, where the flowers become a series of coloured brushstrokes evoking the variety of the flowerbeds there.

And yet behind this apparent diversity there lies the quest for a certain unity of tone. The flowerbeds, Julie’s dress and ribbon, and even Eugène’s hat seem to echo one another, constituting an ensemble of pink and mauve hues. MMo

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selected works The Port of Nice (Le Port de Nice), 1882 Oil on canvas, 53 x 43 cm (23¼ x 17 in.) – Signature stamp lower right – Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet, Denis & Annie Rouart Foundation, 1993, inv. 6010 The Port of Nice (Le Port de Nice), 1882 Oil on canvas, 41 x 55 cm (16⅛ x 21⅝ in.) – Signed lower right: Berthe Morisot – Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Corboud Foundation, inv. Dep. FC710 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 moderate 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 selfportrait 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,

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selected works 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 detaching 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 awakened 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 greying 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 opposite 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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selected works 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 stubbornness 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 quasidecorative 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 draughtsmanship 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 satisfied 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 professional 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

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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 draughtsmanship 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 exhibition – 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 followed 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

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berthe morisot: biographical outline

1841 - B erthe 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.

-M usic lessons with Stamaty fils.

1857 - M adame 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.

-B erthe 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 - M onsieur 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 - D uring 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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berthe morisot: biographical outline

1896 - E dma 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 - B erthe exhibits a large pastel of Edma (Portrait of Mme Montillon) at the Salon.

-O n July 10, Berthe sells a painting and three watercolours to the gallerist Durand-Ruel.

1873 - F inal 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 - F rom 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.

-O n 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.

-H oneymoon on the Isle of Wight and in London; Berthe paints numerous canvases and watercolours.

1876 - E xhibits nineteen works at the second Impressionst exhibition at Galerie Durand-Ruel.

1877 - E xhibits twelve works at the group’s third exhibition on Rue Le Peletier.

1878 - B irth of Julie Manet (1878-1966), on November 14. Berthe’s daughter becomes her favourite model.

1879 - F or 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 - E xhibits 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 - I n 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.

-D eath 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.

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berthe morisot: biographical outline

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.

-T hrough 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.

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press visuals These 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

Berthe Morisot, Jour d’été, 1879 – Oil on canvas – 45.7 x 75.3 cm – The National Gallery, London – © Bridgeman Giraudon Berthe Morisot, Sur le lac du bois de Boulogne, 1884 – Oil on canvas 55 x 43 cm – Private collection © Christian Baraja, studio SLB

Berthe Morisot, Bergère nue couchée, 1891 – Oil on canvas– 56 x 86 cm Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, on loan to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum – © Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan to the ThyssenBornemisza Museum

Berthe Morisot, Jeune Femme en gris étendue, 1879 – Oil on canvas– 24 x 51 cm Private collection– © Christian Baraja, studio SLB

Berthe Morisot, Au bal, 1875 – Oil on canvas – 62 x 52 cm – Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris – © musée Marmottan Monet, Paris / Bridgeman Art / Presse

Berthe Morisot, Autoportrait, 1885 – Oil on

canvas – 61 x 50 cm – Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris – © musée Marmottan Monet, Paris / Bridgeman Art / Presse

Berthe Morisot, Julie rêveuse, 1894, Oil on canvas– 65 x 54 cm Private collection – © Dreyfus

Berthe Morisot, Eugène Manet et sa fille dans le jardin de Bougival, 1881 – Oil on canvas – 73 x 92 cm – Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris – © musée Marmottan Monet, Paris / Bridgeman Art / Presse

Berthe Morisot, Bois de Boulogne, 1893 Oil on canvas– 50 x 61 cm, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris – © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris / Bridgeman Art / Presse Berthe Morisot, Devant la Psyché or Devant le Miroir, 1876 – Oil on canvas 65 x 54 cm – Musée Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid © Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Berthe Morisot, Pasie cousant dans

le jardin, 1881-1882 – Oil on canvas 81 x 100 cm – Musée des beaux-arts, Pau © Jean-Christophe Poumeyrol

Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot

Berthe Morisot, Le Cerisier, 1891 – Oil on canvas – 154 x 80 cm – Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris – © musée Marmottan Monet, Paris / Bridgeman Art / Presse

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publications exploring berthe morisot’s life and work • Exhibition catalogue published by Éditions Hazan Paperback with cover flaps – 220 x 285 mm – 264 pages – 200 Illustrations – Prix : 35 € TTC ISBN: 978 2 7541 06078 – Available 1 March 2012 Edited by Marianne Mathieu, deputy director of the Musée Marmottan Monet (Collections and Communications).

Contributors: Paloma Alarcó, head of the department of modern paintings at the ThyssenBornmisza Museum, Madrid; Emmanuelle Amiot-Saulnier, doctor of Art History, specializing in 19th-century painting; Michèle Moyne, curator at the Palais des Beaux-arts, Lille; Lauranne Neveu, conservation officer at the Musée Marmottan Monet; Pierre Pinchon, doctor of Art History, specializing in 19th-century art / lecturer at the University of Paris I Sorbonne.

English edition translated by Charles Penwarden.

Contents - Foreword, Jacques Taddei - On Berthe Morisot, Paul Valéry - Berthe Morisot: from Wound to Light, Jean-Marie Rouart - Watercolours, Pastels and Drawings in the Work of Berthe Morisot, Marianne Mathieu - Catalogue of exhibited works, Emmanuelle Amiot-Saulnier, Marianne Mathieu, Michèle Moyne, Pierre Pinchon et Paloma Alarcó - Catalogue of graphic works / Collection of the Musée Marmottan Monet, Lauranne Neveu - Chronology, Marianne Mathieu

• Beaux Arts Magazine, special edition 48 pages – 22 x 28.5 cm – 9 € TTC

• Studies of Berthe Morisot and her work - Berthe Morisot by Jean-Dominique Rey and Sylvie Patry Translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie. Éditions Flammarion, 2010 - Une famille dans l’impressionnisme by Jean-Marie Rouart Gallimard, 2001 - Berthe Morisot. Le Secret de la femme en noir by Dominique Bona Grasset, 2000

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musical evenings

Celebrating Berthe Morisot’s links with the artists of her day… Musicians, writers and poets (Mallarmé, Paul Valery, Proust…), friends, family, shared inspiration and themes: a series of recitals conceived as a ‘soundtrack’ to the works on display.

• Tuesday March 13, 2012 at 7 p.m.

Tendresse et rêverie, Valentina Igoshina, piano - Chopin : Nocturne in E flat major Op.9 - Debussy: Two arabesques / La Sérénade ininterrompue / Rêverie / Valse romantique / Nocturne, Mazurka - Medtner: Skazka (‘Fairy Tale’) in G major Op.26 - Tchaikovsky-Rachmaninov: Lullaby - Rachmaninov: Melody / Serenade / Polichinelle Op.3 - Kreisler-Rachmaninov: Liebesfreud • Tuesday April 17, 2012 at 7 p.m.

Musicians from the Orchestre de Paris Programme to be announced.

• Tuesday May 22, 2012 at 7 p.m.

Cygnes et signes (‘Swans and signs’): Gauthier Herrmann, ‘cello, and Romain Descharmes, piano - Duparc: Mélodies - Fauré: Mélodies - Chausson: Pièce - Dvorak: Rusalka (transc.) Kild - Saint-Saëns: Le Cygne • Tuesday June 12, 2012 at 7 p.m.

Le Berceau (‘The Cradle’): Hugues Borsarello, violin, and Olivier Peyrebrune, piano - Louise Farrenc: Variations concertantes sur un rhème suisse - Fauré: Berceuse - Saint-Saëns: Introduction and rondo capriccioso or Havanaise - César Franck: Sonata

Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot

Press dossier – February 2012

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practical information exhibition curators Jacques Taddei

Marianne Mathieu

Director, Musée Marmottan Monet

Deputy director,

Lauranne Neveu Exhibition coordinator

Musée Marmottan Monet (Collections and Communications)

musée marmottan monet Jacques Taddei

François Desfachelle

Directeur, Musée Marmottan Monet

Deputy director

Marie-Catherine Croix

(Administration and Finance)

Deputy director (Communications

Aurélie Gavoille

and External Relations)

Lauranne Neveu

Marianne Mathieu Deputy director (Collections

Antonin Macé de Lépinay Conservation officers

and Communications)

Address

Admission

2, rue Louis-Boilly – 75016 Paris

Standard: 10 euros

Web site www.marmottan.com Access Metro: Muette – Line 9 RER: Boulainvilliers – Line C Bus: 22, 32, 52, P.C. Opening times Open Tuesday to Sunday,

Concessions: 5 euros Under 7s: Free Group bookings Christine Lecca Tel.: 01 44 96 50 33 School groups and bookings: Cécile Lanusse Tel.: 01 44 96 50 41

10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Audioguide

Late-night opening Thursday until 8 p.m.

Available in French,

Closed Mondays, December 25,

English and Japanese

January 1 and May 1.

3 € TTC

media relations Agence Catherine Dantan

Tel. : 01 40 21 05 15

Cathia Chabre

cathia@catherine-dantan.fr

7, rue Charles V

or catherine@catherine-dantan.fr

75004 Paris

www.catherine-dantan.fr

Musée Marmottan Monet – Berthe Morisot

Press dossier – February 2012

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