Higonnet, Anne. Berthe Morisot. New York: Harper and Row, 1990.
This is interesting book about the life of Berthe Morisot as a woman painter during the late nineteenth century. The author does a fantastic job of describing Morisot's life through the artist's correspondence. After reading this book, I greatly admire Morisot for her courage to overcome the adversity that French society directed toward her for being a professional woman artist.
During the nineteenth century, a French woman's day consisted of helping the maid with household chores in the morning such as cleaning the house and mending cloths. During the afternoon, groceries were purchased and errands ran. During the evening, guests were invited to the home for dinner and entertainment. Young women were usually taught to play the piano and sing primarily to entertain guests after dinner. Future suitors were usually invited to these dinners where parents would introduce their daughters to the wealthiest and well-mannered in hopes of continuing a well-blooded family.
If a young woman was to stray from this expected course, she was unsexed by society. Men did not admire single women who pursued careers of their own. Men viewed professional women as humorous and did not take many very seriously. They thought of them as inadequate for the "working world of men." Other women viewed these independent women as reckless and foolish.
During the beginning of her painting career, Berthe painted with her older sister, Edma. Both sisters were under the tutelage of Joseph Guichard. His method of teaching was through copying master painting at the Louvre. The earliest known date that the Morisot sisters enrolled to paint at the Louvre is March 19, 1858. Both painters, because they were women, were not allowed to be in public unless escorted by a chaperon. Their chaperon was their mother, Maria Cornelie Morisot, who would read or knit while her daughters copied paintings at the Louvre.
This burden of having a chaperon is clearly stated in a letter by a young Russian painter named Marie Bashkirtseff. She writes:
What I long for is the freedom of going about alone, of coming or going, of sitting on the seats in the Tuileries, and especially in the Luxembourg, of stopping and looking at the artistic shops, of entering the churches and museums, of walking the old streets at nights; that's what I long for; and that's the freedom without which one can't become a real artist. Do you imagine I can get much good from what I see, chaperoned as I am, and when, in order to go to the Louvre, I must wait for my carriage, my lady companion, or my family? (p.30)
Guichard wrote an interesting letter to Cornelie Morisot before asking his friend Camille Corot to take over the Morisot sisters' tutoring. The letter reads:
With characters like your daughters', my teaching will make them painters, not minor amateur talents. Do you really understand what that means? In the world of the grand bourgeoisie in which you move, it would be a revolution, I would even say a catastrophe. (p.19)
I think Guichard was afraid of being responsible for producing a professional female artist in a time when the professional art world was dominated by men. I believe he didn't want his own name and reputation to suffer. He saw the potential for success in both Berthe and Edma Morisot and ran from it.
During the tutoring of Corot, the Morisot sisters were meeting many well-known artists to include: Fantin-Latour, Carolus Duran, Alfred Stevens, and Edouard Manet. Of these artists, Edouard Manet would become a lifelong friend of the Morisot family.
Berthe lost her only painting companion when Edma married on March 8, 1869. It seems Edma's independence as a woman and her career as a painter faded when she married. This is evident in a letter to Berthe, she writes:
I wanted to try working during the day. I made a complete mess of a still life on a blank canvas, and it tired me so much that after dinner, I lay down and I almost slept on the sofa.... What good is it tiring yourself so much to do something that satisfies so little. (p.50)
After the loss of her sister to wedlock, it seemed Morisot's career as a painter became an obsession. Her mother, who began to view Berthe's painting career as nonsense, constantly tried to persuade her to marry. In a letter, Berthe quotes her mother as saying:
My mother politely told me yesterday she had no confidence in my talent and she believed me incapable of ever doing anything serious.
It seems that even Morisot's own self-esteem was influenced by a strongly opposed French society that viewed single, professional women as "outcasts." At the age of thirty-two, as an accomplished painter, Berthe wrote in her diary:
I'm reading Darwin; it's hardly subject matter for a woman, even less for an unmarried woman; what I do see clearly is that my situation is unbearable from every point of view. (p.114)
Morisot finally did marry, but not under the pressure of her mother. On December 22, 1874, Berthe Morisot married Eugene Manet, Edouard's younger brother.
Morisot continued to paint and sign her canvases under her maiden name, not as a way of independence, but so not to be confused with Edouard. She took part in the first Impressionist exhibition and many to follow.
I found this book enjoyable and informative to read. It was a good feeling to be able to analyze Morisot's writing without a secondhand interpretation from the author. I was able to draw my own conclusions from Morisot's writing.
Again, this book has opened my eyes to the struggle of not only Berthe Morisot, but of all women artists during the nineteenth century to become established artists.