Berthe Morisot's Images of Women PDF
Preview Berthe Morisot's Images of Women
Berthe Morisots Images of Women Berthe Morisot's Images of Women ANNE HIGONNET HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 1992 Copyright © 1992 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 10987654321 Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Florence Gould Foundation. This book is printed on acid-free paper, and its binding materials have been chosen for strength and durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Higonnet, Anne, 1959- Benhe Morisot's images of women / Anne Higonnet. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-06798-3 (acid-free) I. Morisot, Berthe, 1841-1895—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Women in art. I. Title. ND553.M88H53 1992 759.4—dc2o 91-29966 CIP For Jeffrey Hart, Ethel Parmelee Higonnet, Margaret Randolph Higonnet, Patrice Louis-René Higonnet, and Janet King Contents 1. Introduction ι 2. Impressionism in the Feminine Case 6 3. Amateur Pictures: Images and Practices 36 4. Heiress to the Amateur Tradition 61 5. Feminine Visual Culture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 84 6. Painting Women 123 7. Mirrored Bodies /5^ 8. An Image of One's Own 9. A Mother Pictures Her Daughter 212 10. Conclusion 253 Notes 261 List of Illustrations 28^ Acknowledgments 301 Index 303 Chapter One Introduction All my walls are lost in mirrors, whereupon I trace Self to right hand, self to left hand, self in every place. Self-same solitary figure, self-same seeking face. Christina Rossetti, "A Royal Pnncess," 18y6 Berthe Morisot became a painter despite being a woman. She painted the way she did because she was a woman. In some ways Morisot's images resemble the pictures women of her time and social situation commonly made of themselves, while in other respects her work belongs to the esthetically and conceptually elite world of fine art painting. Yet few women who made the kinds of pictures approved of as feminine became paint- ers, and none attained the rank of "great painter," a position even Morisot is seen as only approaching.' Nineteenth-century Euro- pean definitions of femininity and of painting combined to prevent women from becoming or being recognized as important artists. Morisot is very much the exception that proves the rule. Her work allows us to see how far a woman's expressive possibilities extended and therefore to discern all the more clearly where they ended. Born in 1841 into a wealthy and well-connected family, Mori- sot enjoyed the support of her parents, sisters, friends, colleagues, husband, and child. Her unassailable social position, especially after her marriage to Eugène Manet (the painter Edouard's brother). B E R T HE M O R I S OT S I M A G ES OF W O M EN compensated for her participation in the radical Impressionist movement. She contributed to all but one of the Impressionist ex- hibitions,^ as well as to other avant-garde exhibitions, and main- tained collégial relationships not only with painters and sculptors but also with critics, poets, and politicians. Exceptionally self- disciplined, she worked steadily for more than thirty years. At her death in 1895 she left about 850 oils, pastels, and watercolors. During Morisot's lifetime all aspects of women's visual culture were changing rapidly, so much so that we might say of her career that pictorial phylogeny summarizes ontogeny. Her individual de- velopment encapsulated widespread cultural trends affecting the entire European middle class. Her paintings evolved from the ama- teur work characteristic of women's pictorial production in the be- ginning of the century, through the commercial imagery of mid- century, and on to the new conditions of painting inaugurated in the 1860s and 1870s by the Impressionist painters. More broadly, her work reflected a middle-class ideology of domestic femininity which itself continued to change during a time of tremendous de- mographic and economic upheaval. Throughout the century, but especially in its earlier decades, middle- and upper-class women represented themselves in the ama- teur pictures and albums they made. Amateur women artists were so numerous and their work was so extensive and consistent that we can speak of a feminine pictorial tradition. Morisot, together with her sister Edma, began painting in this tradition. It continued to determine some of the most basic aspects of Morisot's work for the rest of her career: her subject matter, her attitude toward exhi- bition and sales, and, most fundamentally, the relationship of her professional work to her personal life. After about 1840, however, mass-produced prints of domestic scenes and contemporary fashions began to rival women's amateur imagery. By mid-century, their prevalence was such that no woman could ignore their impact nor entirely resist the new feminine iden- tities they fostered. Their claim on Morisot's attention was at once
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