Morisot was considered to be a sensitive artist, both in personality and also technical style. She possessed the lightest of touches with her brush which allowed her to differentiate herself from other members of the Impressionist movement. She also spent a lot of time in the company of other members of this close-knit group, allowing influence to flow both ways. It's rejection of traditional ideas made her it an appropriate movement for a female artist to flourish within, something considered unthinkable in previous centuries. The sociable strength of this group also provided her with moral support as she challenged the beliefs of some critics as to who could be considered an artist.

Berthe Morisot One of 'Les Trois Grandes Dames,' Berthe Morisot was a highly regarded Impressionist artist, and drew in audiences with her intimate paintings of domestic scenes and landscapes. Track Your Order. Berthe Morisot was an influential painter, and one of the few women in her time to be recognized by the elite and exclusive institutions of fine art. While she completed many great works, perhaps. Buy Morisot Prints Nowfrom Amazon. Berthe Morisot, as a key member of the French Impressionist movement, can be considered one of the most influential female artists in history. Her concentration on portraits of domestic scenes of friends and family helped to differentiate her work from other members of this famous group of artists. The painting featured here was a portrait of Berthe Morisot by Edouard Manet, titled Berthe Morisot.

The artist would slowly develop and amend her artistic techniques as her career progressed. She started to use longer brush strokes, for example, and also spend more time on each artwork. Some of these changes may have been influenced by the likes of Edouard Manet and Eva Gonzalès but were mainly down to her own making. Morisot would also start to produce study sketches prior to commencing the oil painting itself, a sign that she was aiming for a high quality of work and starting to consider herself as a genuine professional artist.

As her confidence and experience grew, this artist would widen her choice of media, taking in pastels, watercolours and oils - sometimes even combining them together in the same artwork. The Impressionists as a whole appreciated pastels for figurative drawings and they were also used frequently by Claude Monet and Edgar Degas. Berthe herself chose smaller canvases for much of her work as compared to her colleagues, perhaps in line with her gender's reputation for being slightly more cautious and less desiring for attention. Morisot's colour palette was considered less developed than some of the other great names listed here, but she was still respected in the way that she used it to produce form.

Some of Morisot's later paintings display the influence of Renoir, specifically in the way in which he would balance figurative detail with the impact of light. To be able to call upon such artists for advice and ideas put her in a very fortunate position but her success was still predominantly due to a high level of natural ability and technical understanding. One of the most obvious differences between Morisot and her male counterparts was the subjects used in her work - frequently she would cover topics from a female perspective, which was obviously very rare for that period.

Berthe Morisot Facts

The mid to late 19th century was a traditional time in terms of the role of women, still along way from the changes that we appreciate in today's society. This contributed heavily to the content used by Morisot in her paintings as much of her life was lived from a domestic viewpoint. The lives of most women were restricted much beyond home life and this ensured a high prominence of family, children and female friends within her work. Many found these domestic scenes refreshing and a change from the other Impressionists concentration on landscape scenes and cityscapes.

It was in the 1860s that this artist's career really took off. She exhibited work on several occasions at the prestigious Salon de Paris before choosing to move away from this mainstream setup in order to work more independently, alongside her fellow Impressionists. That brave move came in 1874 and placed her alongside the likes of Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. From that moment onwards, the European art scene would never be the same again.

In recent years there has been considerable interest in the role of female artists from past centuries, allowing them far greater exposure than they perhaps received during their own lifetimes. This has allowed a more gender-balanced offering of exhibitions around the world and also encouraged women in the modern era to see art as a viable option. Morisot was joined by Mary Cassatt in the Impressionist movement, alongside also Marie Bracquemond, with the three collectively referred to as 'les trois grandes dames'. Perhaps the most famous female of all was Mexican surrealist painter, Frida Kahlo. Furthermore, Morisot's depictions of flowers, of which there was a considerable number, held symbolic values which can also be found in the career of another famous female artist - namely, Georgia O'Keeffe.

Historical Description

Jean C. Harris stated of this work, '…this etching comes from the oil portrait of Morisot of 1872, but is smaller in scale and the image is reversed as compared with that in the oil. In the etching, Manet rejects to some extent the varied vocabulary of strokes which he used in The Boy with Soap Bubbles of 1869 in favor of a more simplified rendering with long, uniformly fine, vertical lines…Many wispy shapes, the ribbons and the hair, break the simple contour. Yet these lines do not function as independent calligraphic accents, but retain their functions as delineators of the characteristic elements of Morisot's appearance' (Harris 216). This intimate portrait of fellow Impressionist Berthe Morisot depicts the care and skill utilized by Manet in executing this piece. Dressed in a fine hat and clothes characteristic of the time period, Morisot's expression appears confident and pleased to be seated on the other side of the easel.

According to J. Harris (1990), a 3rd state (of 3) impression, printed after cancellation (although the cancellation marks are very faint). This work was printed after the 1905 catalogue by Strölin.

Berthe Morisat Taining Period Artwork

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:
This work is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the final sale of the work).

Impressionism Berthe Morisot

1. Harris, Jean C., Edouard Manet: The Graphic Work, 1990, listed as cat no 75 on pgs 216 and 217.

2. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany this work.

About the Framing:
This work is framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, presented in a complimentary moulding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical grade Plexiglas.