A detailed and highly personal account of the life and works of Berthe Morisot, the most influential female impressionist painter.

Berthe Morisot won over the impressionists with her talent and became the first woman of the group alongside Monet, Degas, and Renoir. She was the foremost female painter of the impressionist movement and, to quote Apollinaire, “one of the most complete artists of her day.” Underestimated for more than a century, today her works demonstrate how visionary she was, pioneering a new style of painting.

Including correspondence with key members of the impressionist movement, this book focuses on the most important stages of Morisot’s career: her precocious artistic talent as a child, her participation at age twenty-three in the Salon de Paris of 1864, her marriage in 1874 to Eugène Manet and the birth of their daughter, Julie ― a frequent subject in Morisot’s paintings―and the expressive freedom of her later works. This intimate portrait of the artist and her work is an essential reference on the impressionists.

About the Author:

The late Jean-Dominique Rey, art historian and writer, curated numerous exhibitions and published many books including Monet: Water Lilies, The Complete Series (Flammarion, 2008/2018).
Sylvie Patry, global artistic director for the Kamel Mennour contemporary art gallery in Paris, is former director of conservation and collections at the Musée d’Orsay, and former conservation consultant at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

Impressionism is feminine!

There is a widespread interest in Impressionist painting, and exhibitions on this accessible movement often draw a large and diverse audience. Unfortunately, most of these events display remarkable few works by the female contemporaries of Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro.

Yet there were quite a number of professional female artists in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the exceptional, attractive oil paintings, pastels, watercolors, drawings, and etchings in this volume are by four of the most significant. The works by these French and American artists — Berthe Morisot, a central figure in the Impressionist movement; Mary Cassatt, a very independent artist and a respected colleague of Degas’s; Eva Gonzalès, one of Manet’s most talented pupils; and Marie Bracquemond, whose small oeuvre is of the highest quality — reflect their various lives and experiences as women. Until now, they have never been exhibited together, and this publication contains many unfamiliar and surprising images, waiting to be discovered by both fans of and newcomers to Impressionism.