Marina Gerner The Three Grandes Dames of Impressionism
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ith its shimmering waterlilies and rainy Parisian streets, Impressionism draws big crowds to museums and big sums to auction houses. But, back in its nascent years, this new art movement was too radical for many. Dissolving traditional form in favour of vibrancy and movement and replacing mythological creatures with everyday people, was a novel approach, so much so that many Impressionists were shunned from the government-sponsored Salon. Instead, they decided to stage their own exhibitions. “An unfortunate group struck by the mania of ambition have chosen to exhibit their work,” a critic remarked at the time, describing the group of artists as “five or six lunatics, one of them a woman.” The so-called lunatics and their art are well known today – they include Claude Monet and his pond of waterlilies, Edgar Degas and his stretching ballerinas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir with his couple at a country dance – but let’s turn our attention to the woman in question. Her name is Berthe Morisot and she was one of the genre’s founders. In her lifetime, Morisot was renowned and financially more successful than some of the other Impressionists, but, like many other female artists, the magnitude of her fame was subsequently written out of art history – until recently. Born in 1841 in Bourges, France, Morisot lived at a time when art was seen as the domain of men. What was considered appropriate for middle-class women was to be amateur painters, whose pictures were used to decorate their homes. When Morisot was 16, her mother decided her three daughters, Berthe, Edma and Yves, should take art lessons so they could draw birthday cards for their father.
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marina gerner
