Berthe Morisot

1841 - 1895 • French • Painter • Impressionist

"My ambition is limited to the desire to capture something transient, and yet, this ambition is excessive." - Berthe Morisot

In 1896, on the first anniversary of Morisot's death, MONET, RENOIR, DEGAS, and the poet Stephane Mallarme opened a memorial retrospective in her honor. With those artists, along with her brother-in-law, MANET, who died in 1883, she was a founder of IMPRESSIONISM. Almost a century later, in 1987, another Morisot exhibition was held. "There are many reasons for the relative neglect of Morisot by collectors and historians since 1896, what we now call sexist attitudes chief among them," the introduction to the exhibition catalogue explained. Morisot's art had progressed within the Impressionist vocabulary. She applied paint with almost manic vigor, her brushstrokes crisscrossing each other. At close range the subject of a picture is virtually indistinguishable, and it looks like the work of an ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST concentrating on the evocative texture and color of paint, not on recognizable forms. But at a certain distance Morisot's subjects coalesce-a birdcage, a woman seated in a garden-and open to allusions of time, place, and perhaps story. She painted landscapes and domestic scenes that are filled with the glow of light. That is true even in Mother and Sister of the Artist (1870) despite the black dress the mother wears. As remarkable as her accomplishments are, she still is studied relatively infrequently.