
Born: January 14, 1841 - Bourges, France
Died: March 2, 1895 - Paris, France

Important Art by Berthe MorisotThe below artworks are the most important by Berthe Morisot - that both overview the major creative periods, and highlight the greatest achievements by the artist. | |
![]() ![]() | View of Paris from the Trocadero (1871-72)Artwork description & Analysis: This early work is one of the few fully realized landscape works Morisot painted. Completed just after the end of the Franco-Prussian War, the work depicts a view of Paris as a city finally at peace. The view is painted from the top of a hill colloquially known as the Trocadero, today the site of the Palais de Chaillot, overlooking the Seine. Beyond it stretches the Champ-de-Mars, site of the 1867 Exposition Universelle just five years before, which Manet had painted, famously, from nearly the same spot as Morisot does in this work. Now cleared of the massive exhibition buildings, the Champ-de-Mars appears barren and brown, as if its grass has died during the winter. This once-bustling portion of the city, whose fecund fields that showcased industry now lie fallow in Morisot's depictions, mirrors the sort of windswept silence of the larger panorama. The gray sky, opening slightly to a splash of blue at the very top of the canvas, hints at the tumult of the events of the previous five years - the exposition, the war, the fall of Napoleon III's Second Empire, and the Paris Commune - and the notion that the proverbial smoke is, perhaps, finally clearing from Paris in their collective aftermath. Oil on canvas - Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, USA |
![]() ![]() | The Cradle (1872)Artwork description & Analysis: The Cradle is arguably Berthe Morisot's most famous painting. It depicts Morisot's sister Edma gazing down at her daughter Blanche, who is asleep in a cradle behind a gauzy veil. This relatively early work is the first example of Morisot's treatment of the theme of motherhood, which would become a recurring subject in her work, in part due to the era's social limitations placed on women and their ability to explore public places without chaperones. Although the painting was generally admired by critics when it was shown in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, Morisot failed to sell it and eventually decided to keep it within her family. Oil on canvas - Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
![]() ![]() | Dans le Blé (In the Wheatfield) (1875)Artwork description & Analysis: This painting depicts a scene in the village of Gennevilliers, just outside Paris, now a suburb of the French capital, where Morisot's husband's family, the Manets, owned property. The location is typical of that chosen by many Impressionist artists, such as Monet, both as a place to work and for their paintings' subject matter. The painting presents us with a comfortable visual composition of three horizontal zones of color, punctuated by the figure of the young boy to the right of center. The eponymous wheat hints at the traditional farming character of the area, and immediately catches one's attention as it occupies the prime central space on the canvas. Oil on canvas - Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
![]() ![]() | Young Girl in a Ball Gown (1879)Artwork description & Analysis: This depiction of an unknown young woman in a ball dress demonstrates the range of Morisot's work. It is highly dynamic, a sense created through the loosely defined floral background that is echoed in the trimmings of the woman's dress. Peter J. Gärtner argues that this background is a key element of the work, claiming that "the dense vegetation shuts out the external world and protects the young woman's youthful beauty and innocence." It also provides the viewer with a more intimate connection with the sitter, implying that most other viewers are excluded by the painting's enclosed background and tight angle. The lengthy, unkempt brushwork is typical of Morisot's work from the late 1870s, which, as Nathalia Brodskaia has noticed, created a "vibration of color and light" previously unseen in her paintings. Oil on canvas - Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
![]() ![]() | The Harbor at Nice (1881-82)Artwork description & Analysis: Although Morisot is frequently associated with interior or domestic scenes, her work spans a great variety of genres, like the other members of the Impressionist circle. This painting, from the height of the Impressionist era, depicts a cluster of boats docked in the eponymous port in the south of France on the Mediterranean, where Morisot and her family were wintering in 1881-82. It uses an unusually bright palette, and begs comparison with other seminal Impressionist works, including the movement's foundational work, Monet's Impression, Sunrise (1872), which similarly takes a harbor scene as its subject matter. Oil on canvas - Private collection |
![]() ![]() | Reclining Nude Shepherdess (1891)Artwork description & Analysis: This painting is typical of Berthe Morisot's later work, which uses a bright color palette, marked by contrasts between orange, violet and green hues, in contrast to the muted range of colors that she preferred during the 1870s. This is one of several compositions from the early 1890s, which feature a reclining shepherdess, modeled on a young girl from a local village outside Paris. She posed her model nude except for a characteristic headdress, an unusual choice for a female artist at the time. Oil on canvas - Museo Thyssen, Madrid |
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Content compiled and written by Anna Souter
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Peter Clericuzio
" Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Anna Souter
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Peter Clericuzio
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