Berthe Morisot

Breaking away from the opinion upheld by the followers of painter Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) that antique and Italian models were the only foundations of art, a new generation of creators and thinkers started looking at other sources of inspiration. From 1830 onwards, the art of the past was seen in a new light. Beyond the previous focus on Italy alone, so-called ‘foreign‘ schools were given new recognition. In 1838, a Spanish Gallery was opened at the Louvre and its crucial influence on the pivotal painter Édouard Manet (1832–1883) is well known. Between 1842 and 1848, the presence of a dozen paintings attributed to Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), George Morland (1763–1804) and Richard Wilson (1714–1782) marked the arrival, though temporary, of English art at the Louvre.1 Paintings from the Low Countries also became the subject of special study. In addition to the masters who had always been celebrated, Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), considered an emblematic figure by the Romantics, Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), other artists began to emerge from the shadows. Paintings by Frans Hals (1582–1666) and Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), were first acquired by the Louvre in 1869–1870.

French art from the eighteenth century was also attracting new interest. Previously condemned by the philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784), who himself had entered arthistorical purgatory after the French Revolution, French rococo art of the Louis XV period (1715–1774) began to enthuse enlightened art lovers once more. The 4th Marquis of Hertford (1800–1870), one of the most influential collectors of his time, assembled an exceptional collection of older and contemporary paintings in his homes at 2 Rue Laffite in Paris and at the château de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, from which, in 1897, his descendants founded the Wallace Collection in London.

Despite their more modest means, a handful of French collectors played a decisive role in the rehabilitation of the art of this period, such as the Marquis Casimir Perrin de Cypierre (1784–1844), François Hippolyte Walferdin (1795–1880), François Marcille (1790–1856) and his two sons Camille (1815–1875) and Eudoxe (1814–1890), Paul Barroilhet (1810–1871) and finally Louis La Caze (1798–1869). In addition to paintings by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) and Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725– 1805), whose works had never been entirely forgotten, they unearthed paintings and drawings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), François Boucher (1703–1770) and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), which they acquired in auction rooms for modest and sometimes ridiculously low sums. At a time when the painters of the eighteenth century were absent from museum walls, these private individuals ensured the preservation of a tradition

12

that some journalists, art critics and scholars were also reinstating in their writings.

This revival of interest had two coexisting facets: a sociopolitical approach on the one hand and an aesthetic one on the other. The republican Théophile Thoré-Bürger (1807–1869) embodied the first approach, praising art that illustrated everyday life, of which Chardin was the leading voice. The supporters of art for art’s sake, Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) and Arsène Houssaye (1815–1896), praised the exact opposite, celebrating art that was free of social and progressive preoccupations, giving pride of place to the eighteenth-century genre of the fête galante in which elegantly costumed figures mingle playfully in garden settings. The Goncourt brothers, collectors and critics Edmond (1822–1896) and Jules (1830–1870) de Goncourt, were the most famous promoters of this view, which they articulated in their French Painters of the Eighteenth Century, which was first published in the form of 12 instalments from 1859 to 1870 and then assembled in two volumes in 1873–74. Thus, between 1830 and 1874 a new history of art was written that included a wider range of foreign schools and, significantly, earlier French art.

Freed from the Italian model, the eighteenth century, with its appreciation of light pastel colours, spirited technique and everyday subjects, embodied the very essence of this revised art history.

The rediscovery of the eighteenth century and its affinities with Impressionism have been the subject of several important studies over the last fifteen years, including the exhibition dedicated to the La Caze collection in 2007 and then Inspiring Impressionism: The Impressionists and the Art of the Past (2007), Berthe Morisot (2018) and Renoir: Rococo Revival (2022). Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) was compared to Fragonard during her lifetime and the legend even arose that she was a distant descendant of his. She also copied and interpreted Boucher and has over the years become the figurehead of the link between eighteenth-century French art and Impressionism. The Musée Marmottan Monet, which has the largest collection of Morisot’s works in the world, received in 2022 a donation of unpublished archives from the artist’s greatgreat grandchildren. It has had to address this question in the light of these sources and, more generally, place Berthe Morisot’s career and the evolution and reception of her work within the context of this revival of interest in the eighteenth century.

1 841 –1 86 5 : T H E P E R C E I V E D C O N N E C T I O N WITH CHARDIN In 1852, when Berthe Morisot’s family moved to Passy when she was 11 years old, some key thinkers were engaged in rediscovering the eighteenth century.

The historian Charles Blanc (1813–1882), and soon the Goncourt brothers, asserted that French art began with Watteau.2 Eager to revive Fragonard, the collector François Hippolyte Walferdin wrote to the director of the Louvre in 1849:

Today, the museum has at its disposal only two, perhaps three, paintings by an artist who has been ignored for far too long. A painter whose true value has only in the last few years begun to be appreciated in France; [this is] Honoré Fragonard, an artist to whom posterity grants a high rank among great minds who have made the eighteenth century so illustrious. I believe I am doing a service to the public in taking from my collection of works by this master, a painting, which has not been engraved, and donating it to the Nation. It is known to amateurs by the title: La leçon de Clavecin (The Music Lesson) [p22].3 The year the young Morisot moved to Passy the Louvre acquired Boucher’s Diana after the Bath of 1742. A sign of how taste was evolving is that copyists, including Edouard Manet (1832–1883),4 then aged 20, and the 17-year-old Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904),5 registered to copy it as soon as the painting arrived.6 In 1855, only seven paintings

by Boucher, nine by Chardin, three by Fragonard and a single Watteau, The Embarkation for Cythera, were on view at the Louvre. So it was to collectors that young artists in search of discoveries turned. Manet and Fantin were soon invited to the home of Louis La Caze7 and Edgar Degas to the home of François Marcille.8 In 1860, 433 works from private collections were presented to the public by the Galerie Martinet, at an exhibition of mainly eighteenth-century paintings and drawings. The exhibition grouped together iconic works including Boucher’s The Rising of the Sun (1753, Wallace Collection, London) and The Setting of the Sun (1752, Wallace Collection); Chardin’s The House of Cards (c. 1736, Musée du Louvre); Saying Grace (1740, Musée du Louvre); Fragonard’s The Swing (1767, Wallace Collection) and The Souvenir (1776–1778, Wallace Collection); and Watteau’s Pierrot, known previously as Gilles, (1718–1719, Musée du Louvre), as well as The Indifferent and The Delicate Musician.

The event was a milestone and confirmed the revival of eighteenth-century French art. Soon official institutions began to co-operate with the main lenders to the exhibition. Eudoxe Marcille became Director of the Musée

13

Breaking away from the opinion upheld by the followers of painter Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) that antique and Italian models were the only foundations of art, a new generation of creators and thinkers started looking at other sources of inspiration. From 1830 onwards, the art of the past was seen in a new light. Beyond the previous focus on Italy alone, so-called ‘foreign‘ schools were given new recognition. In 1838, a Spanish Gallery was opened at the Louvre and its crucial influence on the pivotal painter Édouard Manet (1832–1883) is well known. Between 1842 and 1848, the presence of a dozen paintings attributed to Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), George Morland (1763–1804) and Richard Wilson (1714–1782) marked the arrival, though temporary, of English art at the Louvre.1 Paintings from the Low Countries also became the subject of special study. In addition to the masters who had always been celebrated, Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), considered an emblematic figure by the Romantics, Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), other artists began to emerge from the shadows. Paintings by Frans Hals (1582–1666) and Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), were first acquired by the Louvre in 1869–1870.

French art from the eighteenth century was also attracting new interest. Previously condemned by the philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784), who himself had entered arthistorical purgatory after the French Revolution, French rococo art of the Louis XV period (1715–1774) began to enthuse enlightened art lovers once more. The 4th Marquis of Hertford (1800–1870), one of the most influential collectors of his time, assembled an exceptional collection of older and contemporary paintings in his homes at 2 Rue Laffite in Paris and at the château de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, from which, in 1897, his descendants founded the Wallace Collection in London.

Despite their more modest means, a handful of French collectors played a decisive role in the rehabilitation of the art of this period, such as the Marquis Casimir Perrin de Cypierre (1784–1844), François Hippolyte Walferdin (1795–1880), François Marcille (1790–1856) and his two sons Camille (1815–1875) and Eudoxe (1814–1890), Paul Barroilhet (1810–1871) and finally Louis La Caze (1798–1869). In addition to paintings by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) and Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725– 1805), whose works had never been entirely forgotten, they unearthed paintings and drawings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), François Boucher (1703–1770) and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), which they acquired in auction rooms for modest and sometimes ridiculously low sums. At a time when the painters of the eighteenth century were absent from museum walls, these private individuals ensured the preservation of a tradition

12

that some journalists, art critics and scholars were also reinstating in their writings.

This revival of interest had two coexisting facets: a sociopolitical approach on the one hand and an aesthetic one on the other. The republican Théophile Thoré-Bürger (1807–1869) embodied the first approach, praising art that illustrated everyday life, of which Chardin was the leading voice. The supporters of art for art’s sake, Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) and Arsène Houssaye (1815–1896), praised the exact opposite, celebrating art that was free of social and progressive preoccupations, giving pride of place to the eighteenth-century genre of the fête galante in which elegantly costumed figures mingle playfully in garden settings. The Goncourt brothers, collectors and critics Edmond (1822–1896) and Jules (1830–1870) de Goncourt, were the most famous promoters of this view, which they articulated in their French Painters of the Eighteenth Century, which was first published in the form of 12 instalments from 1859 to 1870 and then assembled in two volumes in 1873–74. Thus, between 1830 and 1874 a new history of art was written that included a wider range of foreign schools and, significantly, earlier French art.

Freed from the Italian model, the eighteenth century, with its appreciation of light pastel colours, spirited technique and everyday subjects, embodied the very essence of this revised art history.

The rediscovery of the eighteenth century and its affinities with Impressionism have been the subject of several important studies over the last fifteen years, including the exhibition dedicated to the La Caze collection in 2007 and then Inspiring Impressionism: The Impressionists and the Art of the Past (2007), Berthe Morisot (2018) and Renoir: Rococo Revival (2022). Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) was compared to Fragonard during her lifetime and the legend even arose that she was a distant descendant of his. She also copied and interpreted Boucher and has over the years become the figurehead of the link between eighteenth-century French art and Impressionism. The Musée Marmottan Monet, which has the largest collection of Morisot’s works in the world, received in 2022 a donation of unpublished archives from the artist’s greatgreat grandchildren. It has had to address this question in the light of these sources and, more generally, place Berthe Morisot’s career and the evolution and reception of her work within the context of this revival of interest in the eighteenth century.

1 841 –1 86 5 : T H E P E R C E I V E D C O N N E C T I O N WITH CHARDIN In 1852, when Berthe Morisot’s family moved to Passy when she was 11 years old, some key thinkers were engaged in rediscovering the eighteenth century.

The historian Charles Blanc (1813–1882), and soon the Goncourt brothers, asserted that French art began with Watteau.2 Eager to revive Fragonard, the collector François Hippolyte Walferdin wrote to the director of the Louvre in 1849:

Today, the museum has at its disposal only two, perhaps three, paintings by an artist who has been ignored for far too long. A painter whose true value has only in the last few years begun to be appreciated in France; [this is] Honoré Fragonard, an artist to whom posterity grants a high rank among great minds who have made the eighteenth century so illustrious. I believe I am doing a service to the public in taking from my collection of works by this master, a painting, which has not been engraved, and donating it to the Nation. It is known to amateurs by the title: La leçon de Clavecin (The Music Lesson) [p22].3 The year the young Morisot moved to Passy the Louvre acquired Boucher’s Diana after the Bath of 1742. A sign of how taste was evolving is that copyists, including Edouard Manet (1832–1883),4 then aged 20, and the 17-year-old Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904),5 registered to copy it as soon as the painting arrived.6 In 1855, only seven paintings

by Boucher, nine by Chardin, three by Fragonard and a single Watteau, The Embarkation for Cythera, were on view at the Louvre. So it was to collectors that young artists in search of discoveries turned. Manet and Fantin were soon invited to the home of Louis La Caze7 and Edgar Degas to the home of François Marcille.8 In 1860, 433 works from private collections were presented to the public by the Galerie Martinet, at an exhibition of mainly eighteenth-century paintings and drawings. The exhibition grouped together iconic works including Boucher’s The Rising of the Sun (1753, Wallace Collection, London) and The Setting of the Sun (1752, Wallace Collection); Chardin’s The House of Cards (c. 1736, Musée du Louvre); Saying Grace (1740, Musée du Louvre); Fragonard’s The Swing (1767, Wallace Collection) and The Souvenir (1776–1778, Wallace Collection); and Watteau’s Pierrot, known previously as Gilles, (1718–1719, Musée du Louvre), as well as The Indifferent and The Delicate Musician.

The event was a milestone and confirmed the revival of eighteenth-century French art. Soon official institutions began to co-operate with the main lenders to the exhibition. Eudoxe Marcille became Director of the Musée

13

des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, his brother Camille, Curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chartres, and Louis La Caze was a member of the jury for admission to the Salon from 1864 until his death.9 An initial influence is visible in the art of the time, especially among certain realists who saw something of themselves in Chardin. The earliest of these included François Bonvin (1817–1887) in the way he composed and painted his still life paintings, and Charles Joshua Chaplin (1825–1891) in his models’ serenity and the palette in which he chose to depict them.

The young Berthe Morisot seems to have been kept relatively far from this movement, particularly before she first exhibited at the Salon in 1864–1865. Her parents had wanted to provide her a solid and therefore traditional training, and so the eighteenth century was not included.

The example of Louis-Jean François Lagrenée (1724–1805) illustrates this. The curator of the Louvre, Frédéric Villot (1809–1875), had written a long biography of this artist, describing his prestigious career.10 A pupil of Charles-André (Carle) Van Loo (1705–1765),11 Lagrenée entered the French Royal Academy in 1755 and was appointed First Painter to the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (1709–1762) for a term of 3 years, he then became Director of the French Academy in Rome in 1781 and finally Rector of the Academy in 1785.

Lagrenée created work reminiscent of a more restrained Boucher and produced a large number of paintings to decorate royal residences and the homes of great lords.

Villot mentions The Abduction of Deianira [fig. 1], Lagrenée’s reception piece for the Académie Royale (1755), as well as a work by his brother Jean-Jacques, known as Lagrenée the Younger (1739–1821), called Melancholy (c. 1785, Musée du Louvre). It was to his granddaughter, Agathe Lagrenée (1815– 1876) that Morisot’s mother had turned to find a teacher for her daughter. However, despite her ancestors’ prestige, neither their names nor any of their works are mentioned in Agathe’s exchanges with the Morisots. Her husband, Joseph Benoit Guichard (1806–1880) became Berthe’s teacher.

Trained by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), he was sent to Italy from 1833 to 1835 to copy Daniele da Volterra’s (c. 1509–1566) The Descent from the Cross (1545– 1547, Church of the Trinità dei Monti, Rome) and Raphael’s (1483–1520) The Triumph of Galatea (1512, Villa Farnesina, Rome) for the Musée des Copies that the minister Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877) was planning to open. It was only natural then that he should follow the purest educational tradition in favouring the Italian model.

Guichard directed Morisot towards Paolo Veronese (1528– 1588), whom she copied around 1859–60, and Antonio da Correggio (1489–1534), whose art her master urged her to look at more closely.12 Although it is impossible to know whether Berthe Morisot visited the Martinet exhibition in 1860, it is clear that her preoccupations at the time were

14

far from the art of the past. She wanted above all to be introduced to outdoor painting, so she became a student of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) and then of Achille Oudinot (1820–1891) and went on numerous excursions. She set up her easel at Ville d’Avry sometimes, or at Le Chou near Auvers, where she met Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878) and also in the Pyrenees and at Beuzeval. Admitted to the official Salon in 1864, Memory of the Banks of the Oise (no. 1394, CMR 5, location unknown) and Old Path at Auvers (no. 1395, CMR 6, private collection) reflect her interests at the time. Critics praised her ‘interpretation of nature’, the ‘lively feeling’ of her work,13 and recognised the influence of Oudinot and of their master, Corot: ‘Thus, we sometimes see, and it is an occasion for the family be delighted, that the faces of newborns have inherited some of their grandfather’s features.’14 The following year, Morisot, who sent Study at the Water’s Edge (no. 1551, CMR 8, private collection) and a Still Life (no. 1552, CMR 7, location unknown) to the Salon, was compared not only to Corot but also to Chardin. She was praised for ‘an excellent study of still life. Mademoiselle B. Morisot follows Chardin and discovers real reality‘.15 Given Berthe Morisot’s background and interests, such a comparison can be surprising. In fact, Chardin cast a shadow over the Salon of 1865. Louis La Caze, who owned 15 Chardin paintings, was a member of the jury and several works paid tribute to this painter. The title of François Bonvin’s submission, Attributes of Painting and Music (no. 237, c. 1864, Musée Ingres, Montauban), is in itself a tribute, while Antoine Vollon’s (1833–1900) Kitchen Interior, (no. 2196, c. 1865, Musée d’Arts de Nantes) was also praised. ‘A love of the symbolic will never kill Mr. Vollon.

He is only a painter, but what a painter! Chardin would have been happy to sign this Kitchen Interior in which a housekeeper… is scrubbing a cauldron in what could be a reference to a tinker… You have praised Mr. Vollon’s still life, which is very good… but should we not forget Miss Morisot, whose cauldron and stoneware jug, treated with a virile vigour, give the illusion of nature?’16 On a different level, Paul Mantz (1821–1895) mentioned Morisot: Paintings of this type are very common at the Salon as it is not necessary to have to have had extensive training in draughtsmanship at the Academy to be able to paint a cauldron, a candlestick and a bunch of radishes on the corner of a table, women do succeed quite well in this type of domestic painting. Ms. Berthe Morisot brings to her work a great deal of frankness, with a delicate sensitivity to colour and light.17 What can we conclude from these remarks? Some are simply misogynistic stereotypes and others are references

Fig. 1 Louis Jean-François Lagrenée The Abduction of Déjanire (1755) Oil on canvas 157 × 185 cm

15

des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, his brother Camille, Curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chartres, and Louis La Caze was a member of the jury for admission to the Salon from 1864 until his death.9 An initial influence is visible in the art of the time, especially among certain realists who saw something of themselves in Chardin. The earliest of these included François Bonvin (1817–1887) in the way he composed and painted his still life paintings, and Charles Joshua Chaplin (1825–1891) in his models’ serenity and the palette in which he chose to depict them.

The young Berthe Morisot seems to have been kept relatively far from this movement, particularly before she first exhibited at the Salon in 1864–1865. Her parents had wanted to provide her a solid and therefore traditional training, and so the eighteenth century was not included.

The example of Louis-Jean François Lagrenée (1724–1805) illustrates this. The curator of the Louvre, Frédéric Villot (1809–1875), had written a long biography of this artist, describing his prestigious career.10 A pupil of Charles-André (Carle) Van Loo (1705–1765),11 Lagrenée entered the French Royal Academy in 1755 and was appointed First Painter to the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (1709–1762) for a term of 3 years, he then became Director of the French Academy in Rome in 1781 and finally Rector of the Academy in 1785.

Lagrenée created work reminiscent of a more restrained Boucher and produced a large number of paintings to decorate royal residences and the homes of great lords.

Villot mentions The Abduction of Deianira [fig. 1], Lagrenée’s reception piece for the Académie Royale (1755), as well as a work by his brother Jean-Jacques, known as Lagrenée the Younger (1739–1821), called Melancholy (c. 1785, Musée du Louvre). It was to his granddaughter, Agathe Lagrenée (1815– 1876) that Morisot’s mother had turned to find a teacher for her daughter. However, despite her ancestors’ prestige, neither their names nor any of their works are mentioned in Agathe’s exchanges with the Morisots. Her husband, Joseph Benoit Guichard (1806–1880) became Berthe’s teacher.

Trained by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), he was sent to Italy from 1833 to 1835 to copy Daniele da Volterra’s (c. 1509–1566) The Descent from the Cross (1545– 1547, Church of the Trinità dei Monti, Rome) and Raphael’s (1483–1520) The Triumph of Galatea (1512, Villa Farnesina, Rome) for the Musée des Copies that the minister Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877) was planning to open. It was only natural then that he should follow the purest educational tradition in favouring the Italian model.

Guichard directed Morisot towards Paolo Veronese (1528– 1588), whom she copied around 1859–60, and Antonio da Correggio (1489–1534), whose art her master urged her to look at more closely.12 Although it is impossible to know whether Berthe Morisot visited the Martinet exhibition in 1860, it is clear that her preoccupations at the time were

14

far from the art of the past. She wanted above all to be introduced to outdoor painting, so she became a student of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) and then of Achille Oudinot (1820–1891) and went on numerous excursions. She set up her easel at Ville d’Avry sometimes, or at Le Chou near Auvers, where she met Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878) and also in the Pyrenees and at Beuzeval. Admitted to the official Salon in 1864, Memory of the Banks of the Oise (no. 1394, CMR 5, location unknown) and Old Path at Auvers (no. 1395, CMR 6, private collection) reflect her interests at the time. Critics praised her ‘interpretation of nature’, the ‘lively feeling’ of her work,13 and recognised the influence of Oudinot and of their master, Corot: ‘Thus, we sometimes see, and it is an occasion for the family be delighted, that the faces of newborns have inherited some of their grandfather’s features.’14 The following year, Morisot, who sent Study at the Water’s Edge (no. 1551, CMR 8, private collection) and a Still Life (no. 1552, CMR 7, location unknown) to the Salon, was compared not only to Corot but also to Chardin. She was praised for ‘an excellent study of still life. Mademoiselle B. Morisot follows Chardin and discovers real reality‘.15 Given Berthe Morisot’s background and interests, such a comparison can be surprising. In fact, Chardin cast a shadow over the Salon of 1865. Louis La Caze, who owned 15 Chardin paintings, was a member of the jury and several works paid tribute to this painter. The title of François Bonvin’s submission, Attributes of Painting and Music (no. 237, c. 1864, Musée Ingres, Montauban), is in itself a tribute, while Antoine Vollon’s (1833–1900) Kitchen Interior, (no. 2196, c. 1865, Musée d’Arts de Nantes) was also praised. ‘A love of the symbolic will never kill Mr. Vollon.

He is only a painter, but what a painter! Chardin would have been happy to sign this Kitchen Interior in which a housekeeper… is scrubbing a cauldron in what could be a reference to a tinker… You have praised Mr. Vollon’s still life, which is very good… but should we not forget Miss Morisot, whose cauldron and stoneware jug, treated with a virile vigour, give the illusion of nature?’16 On a different level, Paul Mantz (1821–1895) mentioned Morisot: Paintings of this type are very common at the Salon as it is not necessary to have to have had extensive training in draughtsmanship at the Academy to be able to paint a cauldron, a candlestick and a bunch of radishes on the corner of a table, women do succeed quite well in this type of domestic painting. Ms. Berthe Morisot brings to her work a great deal of frankness, with a delicate sensitivity to colour and light.17 What can we conclude from these remarks? Some are simply misogynistic stereotypes and others are references

Fig. 1 Louis Jean-François Lagrenée The Abduction of Déjanire (1755) Oil on canvas 157 × 185 cm

15

“To me, it seems that Rubens is perhaps the only painter to have completely rendered beauty: the moist gaze (the shadows of eyelashes), the transparent skin, the silky hair, the graceful posture…

It is, however, right to add those of the last century, who have also rendered it with more affectation but plenty of charm. Look at the graces in Boucher’s great painting of Venus and Vulcan, the portraits of Madame de Pompadour

by Boucher and La Tour, the admirable Perronneaus from the Groult collection, and also (some of) the English Masters, Reynolds, Romney.” 1

In this note that seems quickly jotted down just for herself, Berthe Morisot retraces, at a mature age, a lineage from Rubens to Boucher and to the pastellists Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788) and Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (1715/16–1783), and also to the English Masters with whom she had become more familiar in London. Thanks to this key, we can look for the eighteenth-century art she would have seen in the homes she frequented, in museums and at exhibitions, and try to discern how her intimate knowledge of eighteenth-century painting techniques permeated her work.2 T H E L AC E A N D S I L K WO R L D S O F M O R I S OT ’ S C H I L D H O O D During his tenure as Prefect (a senior government administrator)3 from 1840 to 1852, Morisot’s father, Edmé Tiburce Morisot (1806–1874), was also a pioneer of the arts. In the Haute-Vienne department (August 1841 – February 1848), in Limoges, he was responsible for the founding of the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the Musée national Adrien Dubouché porcelain museum. He called on private individuals to donate their ‘old paintings’,4 and set an example by being the first donor, giving several works including a Portrait of Louis XVI.5 The local elegant society living ‘in lace and silk’, as described two generations later by Morisot’s niece, Paule Gobillard,6 [cat. 17] followed suit and donated works, especially eighteenth-century paintings, such as Portrait of a Woman (presumed to be the Marquise de Boufflers) by Jean-Marc Nattier (1685–1766).7

Edmé Tiburce Morisot continued this policy of encouraging donations after moving to the Calvados region (1849–51). At the Académie Impériale des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres in Caen, of which he was president, he knew the Baroness Michau de Montaran,8 who bequeathed her collection to the city’s museum, a highlight of which was a Pastorale signed ‘F. Boucher’ although the signature had not yet been discovered.9 Nearly half a century later, Julie Manet (1878–1966), Berthe Morisot’s daughter and the Prefect’s granddaughter, rightly noted during her visit to the museum that, ‘one discovers many pretty things: a Boucher’.10

BERTHE MORISOT

“Il me semble que Rubens est peut-être le peintre le seul peintre ayant rendu complètement la beauté ; le regard humide, {les ombres des cils}, la peau transparente, les cheveux soyeux, la grâce de l’attitude…

Il est pourtant juste d’y joindre ceux du siècle dernier qui l’ont rendue également avec plus d’afféterie mais bien du charme.

Voir les grâces du grand tableau de Vénus et Vulcain de Boucher, les portraits de Mme de Pompadour de Boucher et Latour, les admirables Perroneau de la collection Groult – et aussi {quelques} les Maîtres Anglais – Reynolds, Romney…”

Berthe Morisot Transcribed from the original: Berthe Morisot, Carnet vert A, 1885–1886

30

Berthe Morisot’s family history is intertwined with eighteenth-century art and it played a significant role in her early years. Coming from a social circle of art lovers, it is hard to imagine that the Morisot girls and their parents, at the suggestion of their painting instructors Jean-BaptisteCamille Corot (1796–1875) and Achille Oudinot (1820–1891), were not among the visitors to the 1860 exhibition of paintings and drawings of the French School mainly of the eighteenth century, held at the Galerie Martinet in Paris.11

1 86 4 : WAT T E AU A N D B O U C H E R AT T H E RIESENER’S HOME In the summer of 1864, Morisot entered the world of Léon Riesener, his wife and daughters, Louise Thérèse (1840–1932) and Rosalie (1843–1913), through the country gate of the Rieseners’ mill in Beuzeval, rented to her family for the summer, far from the sophistication of Cabourg and Dives-sur-Mer. Inviting Delacroix’s grieving nephew, Léon, to visit them, Morisot’s mother Cornélie had written that ‘you will eat your own strawberries’. The common heritage of their family backgrounds brought together the granddaughter of a cabinetmaker who became architect-auditor of the Crown (Architecte-Vérificateur de la Couronne),12 Tiburce Pierre Morisot (1769–1827) and the grandson of Jean Henri Riesener (1734–1806), official cabinetmaker to King Louis XVI.

When Morisot returned to Paris, she became a regular visitor to the Hôtel Particulier at 18 Cours la Reine (today the Cours Albert 1er) that Riesener had built and decorated with passion. ‘Except for some furniture and the family portraits, the Revolution took everything,’ Riesener wrote to critic Philippe Burty (1830–1890).13 He could show Morisot the Portrait of Jean-Henri Riesener by Antoine Vestier (1740–1824)14 and a Portrait of Mme Longrois in pastel

by Marie-Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818).15 He revived the golden age of his ancestors around an exceptional group of six tapestries from the series Les Fêtes Italiennes after François Boucher: The Dance, The Music, The Gardener, The Hunter, The Fisherwoman and The Operator (a group of musicians), inherited from his maternal grandfather,16 Pierre Mellon Hassassin de Longroy (1752–1840), GardeMeuble de la Couronne (Keeper of the Crown’s Furniture).17 According to recent research, this set was woven in six pieces by the Manufacture de Beauvais between September 1751 and February 1753.18 The dimensions of the largest tapestry, The Dance (310 × 475 cm), which was placed above a wainscot as shown in a painting by Riesener [p. 16, fig. 2], determined the size of the salon on the first floor, and consequently the dimensions of the whole house.

He created small paintings after these tapestries, of which three; The Gardener, The Fisherwoman and a detail of The Operator were framed as a triptych [fig. 12].19 When Morisot went to this house, to see the tapestries she had to enter what the Riesener family called ‘l’appartement de la duchesse’. Adèle d’Affry, Duchess of Castiglione Colonna, known by the artist pseudonym of ‘Marcello’, had been renting the first floor since 1861.20 Riesener had written to her: ‘Lower the blinds, the sun will burn my tapestries!’21 It was in this luxurious eighteenth-century setting that Morisot met the sculptor, a witty woman and a demanding artist and a major figure of Parisian society, of whom she would write that she gave her the only great friendship ‘between women’ in her life:

31

“To me, it seems that Rubens is perhaps the only painter to have completely rendered beauty: the moist gaze (the shadows of eyelashes), the transparent skin, the silky hair, the graceful posture…

It is, however, right to add those of the last century, who have also rendered it with more affectation but plenty of charm. Look at the graces in Boucher’s great painting of Venus and Vulcan, the portraits of Madame de Pompadour

by Boucher and La Tour, the admirable Perronneaus from the Groult collection, and also (some of) the English Masters, Reynolds, Romney.” 1

In this note that seems quickly jotted down just for herself, Berthe Morisot retraces, at a mature age, a lineage from Rubens to Boucher and to the pastellists Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788) and Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (1715/16–1783), and also to the English Masters with whom she had become more familiar in London. Thanks to this key, we can look for the eighteenth-century art she would have seen in the homes she frequented, in museums and at exhibitions, and try to discern how her intimate knowledge of eighteenth-century painting techniques permeated her work.2 T H E L AC E A N D S I L K WO R L D S O F M O R I S OT ’ S C H I L D H O O D During his tenure as Prefect (a senior government administrator)3 from 1840 to 1852, Morisot’s father, Edmé Tiburce Morisot (1806–1874), was also a pioneer of the arts. In the Haute-Vienne department (August 1841 – February 1848), in Limoges, he was responsible for the founding of the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the Musée national Adrien Dubouché porcelain museum. He called on private individuals to donate their ‘old paintings’,4 and set an example by being the first donor, giving several works including a Portrait of Louis XVI.5 The local elegant society living ‘in lace and silk’, as described two generations later by Morisot’s niece, Paule Gobillard,6 [cat. 17] followed suit and donated works, especially eighteenth-century paintings, such as Portrait of a Woman (presumed to be the Marquise de Boufflers) by Jean-Marc Nattier (1685–1766).7

Edmé Tiburce Morisot continued this policy of encouraging donations after moving to the Calvados region (1849–51). At the Académie Impériale des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres in Caen, of which he was president, he knew the Baroness Michau de Montaran,8 who bequeathed her collection to the city’s museum, a highlight of which was a Pastorale signed ‘F. Boucher’ although the signature had not yet been discovered.9 Nearly half a century later, Julie Manet (1878–1966), Berthe Morisot’s daughter and the Prefect’s granddaughter, rightly noted during her visit to the museum that, ‘one discovers many pretty things: a Boucher’.10

BERTHE MORISOT

“Il me semble que Rubens est peut-être le peintre le seul peintre ayant rendu complètement la beauté ; le regard humide, {les ombres des cils}, la peau transparente, les cheveux soyeux, la grâce de l’attitude…

Il est pourtant juste d’y joindre ceux du siècle dernier qui l’ont rendue également avec plus d’afféterie mais bien du charme.

Voir les grâces du grand tableau de Vénus et Vulcain de Boucher, les portraits de Mme de Pompadour de Boucher et Latour, les admirables Perroneau de la collection Groult – et aussi {quelques} les Maîtres Anglais – Reynolds, Romney…”

Berthe Morisot Transcribed from the original: Berthe Morisot, Carnet vert A, 1885–1886

30

Berthe Morisot’s family history is intertwined with eighteenth-century art and it played a significant role in her early years. Coming from a social circle of art lovers, it is hard to imagine that the Morisot girls and their parents, at the suggestion of their painting instructors Jean-BaptisteCamille Corot (1796–1875) and Achille Oudinot (1820–1891), were not among the visitors to the 1860 exhibition of paintings and drawings of the French School mainly of the eighteenth century, held at the Galerie Martinet in Paris.11

1 86 4 : WAT T E AU A N D B O U C H E R AT T H E RIESENER’S HOME In the summer of 1864, Morisot entered the world of Léon Riesener, his wife and daughters, Louise Thérèse (1840–1932) and Rosalie (1843–1913), through the country gate of the Rieseners’ mill in Beuzeval, rented to her family for the summer, far from the sophistication of Cabourg and Dives-sur-Mer. Inviting Delacroix’s grieving nephew, Léon, to visit them, Morisot’s mother Cornélie had written that ‘you will eat your own strawberries’. The common heritage of their family backgrounds brought together the granddaughter of a cabinetmaker who became architect-auditor of the Crown (Architecte-Vérificateur de la Couronne),12 Tiburce Pierre Morisot (1769–1827) and the grandson of Jean Henri Riesener (1734–1806), official cabinetmaker to King Louis XVI.

When Morisot returned to Paris, she became a regular visitor to the Hôtel Particulier at 18 Cours la Reine (today the Cours Albert 1er) that Riesener had built and decorated with passion. ‘Except for some furniture and the family portraits, the Revolution took everything,’ Riesener wrote to critic Philippe Burty (1830–1890).13 He could show Morisot the Portrait of Jean-Henri Riesener by Antoine Vestier (1740–1824)14 and a Portrait of Mme Longrois in pastel

by Marie-Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818).15 He revived the golden age of his ancestors around an exceptional group of six tapestries from the series Les Fêtes Italiennes after François Boucher: The Dance, The Music, The Gardener, The Hunter, The Fisherwoman and The Operator (a group of musicians), inherited from his maternal grandfather,16 Pierre Mellon Hassassin de Longroy (1752–1840), GardeMeuble de la Couronne (Keeper of the Crown’s Furniture).17 According to recent research, this set was woven in six pieces by the Manufacture de Beauvais between September 1751 and February 1753.18 The dimensions of the largest tapestry, The Dance (310 × 475 cm), which was placed above a wainscot as shown in a painting by Riesener [p. 16, fig. 2], determined the size of the salon on the first floor, and consequently the dimensions of the whole house.

He created small paintings after these tapestries, of which three; The Gardener, The Fisherwoman and a detail of The Operator were framed as a triptych [fig. 12].19 When Morisot went to this house, to see the tapestries she had to enter what the Riesener family called ‘l’appartement de la duchesse’. Adèle d’Affry, Duchess of Castiglione Colonna, known by the artist pseudonym of ‘Marcello’, had been renting the first floor since 1861.20 Riesener had written to her: ‘Lower the blinds, the sun will burn my tapestries!’21 It was in this luxurious eighteenth-century setting that Morisot met the sculptor, a witty woman and a demanding artist and a major figure of Parisian society, of whom she would write that she gave her the only great friendship ‘between women’ in her life:

31

When it exists between two women, friendship requires the same care [as between a man and a woman], which is extremely rare. It becomes charming. I have only ever known this in my relationship with D[uchess] C[olonna], but now I cannot think without fondness about those long days of aimless strolling, shopping and chatter.

We had everything to say to each other and with her I dared to bare my soul.22 Like Morisot whose father, a former Prefect, had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts (1828–32), Marcello’s father was a senior government officer and an artist (watercolourist and draughtsman).23 A Portrait of King Louis XVI after LouisMichel van Loo took pride of place in the living room of the family home in Switzerland,24 and it appears in a portrait Marcello made of her sister.25 Working closely with the Empress Eugénie, she sculpted busts of Marie-Antoinette at Versailles and Marie-Antoinette at the Temple that were exhibited at the Paris Salon in May 1866.26 The unforgettable figures of the Fêtes Italiennes, sitting on the ground in a natural setting, would later transfer into Morisot’s pastoral scenes and compositions where she positioned the model, most often Edma, sitting on a meadow between an umbrella and a fan (Reading)27 or surrounded by her children and a small dog (In a Park).28 Morisot copied in her notebook a passage from the Maison d’un Artiste (1880) quoted by Paul Bourget in Nouveaux Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine,29 in which the Goncourt brothers, writing about their tapestries,30 described ‘how charming it is to have walls of tapestries in the room where one sleeps… the pretty awakening of the dawn on the velvet of these colours… and the soft and imperceptible activation in the white iridescence of the weft, in the tender nuances, in the coquettish shades…

And, as in the first ray of light, what were merely diffused and smiling marks only a moment ago start to take shape… becoming silhouettes of powdered shepherdesses, with sky-blue bodices, sitting on mounds in golden vegetation’.

Morisot also copied the comment by Paul Bourget that could have been her own: ‘Here is the supreme, almost pathological impression, to which the pleasures and pains known only to the insider are attached.’

Fig. 12 Léon Riesener Tapestries of the House at 18, Cours la Reine, Triptych (after 1846) Oil on mounted paper 31.5 × 51 cm

32

É D O UA R D M A N E T ’ S ‘ S M A L L R O S E WO O D TA B L E ’ Having met Édouard Manet (1832–1883) through Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904), the Morisot sisters started in 1868 to attend the soirees of Madame Auguste Manet, his mother, who owned a few works from the ‘last century’: two colour engravings after Philibert-Louis Debucourt (1755–1832), two engravings after Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), and a terracotta bust of a woman by the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Defernex (1728–1783) ‘dated 1760’.31

The eighteenth century probably had a greater presence at the Château de Vassé (Rouessé-Vassé, Sarthe), which belonged to the maternal branch of the Manets, another world ‘in lace and silk’ where Édouard went to rest after returning from Madrid in 1865, and where Berthe Morisot and her family also stayed. The descriptions of this residence concur in evoking an aristocratic way of life unchanged since the eighteenth century.32 This world was close to that of one of Manet’s friends, Albert de Balleroy (1828–1872),33 whose studio he shared. Like Riesener’s house, Albert de Balleroy’s chateau in Calvados, which made a strong impression on Marcel Proust (1871–1922), displayed a hanging after Boucher’s Fêtes italiennes.34 A marquetry table with gilt bronze fittings from the Louis XV period, shown both in paintings by Édouard Manet and Morisot, demonstrates their interest in the eighteenth century. Manet included it in several of his still lifes from 1870 onwards,35 including The Brioche (1870) [fig. 13], inspired by Jean-BaptisteSiméon Chardin’s (1699–1779) The Brioche (1763) [fig. 14] that was included in the 1869 La Caze bequest to the Musée du Louvre, and in portraits such as that of Isabelle Lemonnier (around 1877, Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Nana (1877, Hamburg Kunsthalle), in whose boudoir it was placed.36 After her brother-in-law’s death, Morisot used this table in Apples (1887, once in Pierre Auguste Renoir’s collection) and in her Portrait of Madame Escholier née Louise Riesener [cat. 15], which shares the elegance, preciousness and palette of the eighteenth century, not least illustrated by the presence of a covered porcelain bowl which, for the initiated, referred to Chardin’s composition.37 Morisot owned several porcelain and earthenware objects either from or inspired by the eighteenth century.38 Her eclectic furniture included pieces from the ‘last century’ that she showed in her paintings: a Louis XVI bed in Woman at Her Toilette [cat. 7] and Waking Up;39 and a cabriole armchair of the same period which can be seen in Julie Manet and her Greyhound Laertes [cat. 45]. Perhaps Morisot inherited this taste from her mother Cornélie, who wrote the following after her brother acquired a piece of furniture from this period: ‘A small Louis XVI dressing table hides the strangeness of sitting there to perform one’s toilette, and I strongly suspect that, since it was bought recently, it must have been a little for my benefit.’40

33

When it exists between two women, friendship requires the same care [as between a man and a woman], which is extremely rare. It becomes charming. I have only ever known this in my relationship with D[uchess] C[olonna], but now I cannot think without fondness about those long days of aimless strolling, shopping and chatter.

We had everything to say to each other and with her I dared to bare my soul.22 Like Morisot whose father, a former Prefect, had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts (1828–32), Marcello’s father was a senior government officer and an artist (watercolourist and draughtsman).23 A Portrait of King Louis XVI after LouisMichel van Loo took pride of place in the living room of the family home in Switzerland,24 and it appears in a portrait Marcello made of her sister.25 Working closely with the Empress Eugénie, she sculpted busts of Marie-Antoinette at Versailles and Marie-Antoinette at the Temple that were exhibited at the Paris Salon in May 1866.26 The unforgettable figures of the Fêtes Italiennes, sitting on the ground in a natural setting, would later transfer into Morisot’s pastoral scenes and compositions where she positioned the model, most often Edma, sitting on a meadow between an umbrella and a fan (Reading)27 or surrounded by her children and a small dog (In a Park).28 Morisot copied in her notebook a passage from the Maison d’un Artiste (1880) quoted by Paul Bourget in Nouveaux Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine,29 in which the Goncourt brothers, writing about their tapestries,30 described ‘how charming it is to have walls of tapestries in the room where one sleeps… the pretty awakening of the dawn on the velvet of these colours… and the soft and imperceptible activation in the white iridescence of the weft, in the tender nuances, in the coquettish shades…

And, as in the first ray of light, what were merely diffused and smiling marks only a moment ago start to take shape… becoming silhouettes of powdered shepherdesses, with sky-blue bodices, sitting on mounds in golden vegetation’.

Morisot also copied the comment by Paul Bourget that could have been her own: ‘Here is the supreme, almost pathological impression, to which the pleasures and pains known only to the insider are attached.’

Fig. 12 Léon Riesener Tapestries of the House at 18, Cours la Reine, Triptych (after 1846) Oil on mounted paper 31.5 × 51 cm

32

É D O UA R D M A N E T ’ S ‘ S M A L L R O S E WO O D TA B L E ’ Having met Édouard Manet (1832–1883) through Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904), the Morisot sisters started in 1868 to attend the soirees of Madame Auguste Manet, his mother, who owned a few works from the ‘last century’: two colour engravings after Philibert-Louis Debucourt (1755–1832), two engravings after Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), and a terracotta bust of a woman by the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Defernex (1728–1783) ‘dated 1760’.31

The eighteenth century probably had a greater presence at the Château de Vassé (Rouessé-Vassé, Sarthe), which belonged to the maternal branch of the Manets, another world ‘in lace and silk’ where Édouard went to rest after returning from Madrid in 1865, and where Berthe Morisot and her family also stayed. The descriptions of this residence concur in evoking an aristocratic way of life unchanged since the eighteenth century.32 This world was close to that of one of Manet’s friends, Albert de Balleroy (1828–1872),33 whose studio he shared. Like Riesener’s house, Albert de Balleroy’s chateau in Calvados, which made a strong impression on Marcel Proust (1871–1922), displayed a hanging after Boucher’s Fêtes italiennes.34 A marquetry table with gilt bronze fittings from the Louis XV period, shown both in paintings by Édouard Manet and Morisot, demonstrates their interest in the eighteenth century. Manet included it in several of his still lifes from 1870 onwards,35 including The Brioche (1870) [fig. 13], inspired by Jean-BaptisteSiméon Chardin’s (1699–1779) The Brioche (1763) [fig. 14] that was included in the 1869 La Caze bequest to the Musée du Louvre, and in portraits such as that of Isabelle Lemonnier (around 1877, Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Nana (1877, Hamburg Kunsthalle), in whose boudoir it was placed.36 After her brother-in-law’s death, Morisot used this table in Apples (1887, once in Pierre Auguste Renoir’s collection) and in her Portrait of Madame Escholier née Louise Riesener [cat. 15], which shares the elegance, preciousness and palette of the eighteenth century, not least illustrated by the presence of a covered porcelain bowl which, for the initiated, referred to Chardin’s composition.37 Morisot owned several porcelain and earthenware objects either from or inspired by the eighteenth century.38 Her eclectic furniture included pieces from the ‘last century’ that she showed in her paintings: a Louis XVI bed in Woman at Her Toilette [cat. 7] and Waking Up;39 and a cabriole armchair of the same period which can be seen in Julie Manet and her Greyhound Laertes [cat. 45]. Perhaps Morisot inherited this taste from her mother Cornélie, who wrote the following after her brother acquired a piece of furniture from this period: ‘A small Louis XVI dressing table hides the strangeness of sitting there to perform one’s toilette, and I strongly suspect that, since it was bought recently, it must have been a little for my benefit.’40

33

“The things I saw gave me a great desire to become thoroughly acquainted with English painting.”

BERTHE MORISOT

ON THE ISLE OF WIGHT In August 1875 Berthe Morisot painted her husband Eugène Manet looking out through the open sitting-room window of Globe Cottage at West Cowes on the Isle of Wight [cat. 2]. He gazes across a flower-filled front garden and green picket fence onto the Parade, where a smartly dressed nanny escorts a little girl in pinafore and straw hat, and beyond them to the yachts and steamboat gathered at the pier. The couple had married on 22 December 1874, and this was their honeymoon. Morisot had long wanted to visit England. During childhood her English governess Louisa had introduced the family to the English custom of birthday cakes trimmed with candles and instilled in her a precocious taste for English literature.1 Eugène twists around on his chair, boater and blazer on, ready to go out.

Morisot noted affectionately that he was an impatient model, writing to her sister Edma, who had often modelled for her in the past: ‘I began something in the sitting room, of Eugène. The poor man has taken your place. But he is a less obliging model; at once it becomes too much for him.’2

Morisot conveys spontaneity, but this is a sophisticated composition with a strong grid structure set within a framework of silvery greys, Eugène’s restless form balanced by the billowing curtain on the right. The figures outside are precisely positioned: the woman’s face is obscured, but her proportions are neatly marked by the sash window at her shoulder and fence at her wrist, while her black waistband is aligned with the tarred vessels at the pier. The girl continues the vertical of the windowpane and her white pinafore echoes in miniature the curtains bordering the composition. Painted from inside looking out, the picture encapsulates Morisot’s position as a new visitor to the island: hesitant to set up her easel in public, but alert to visual possibilities.

42

“Ce que j’ai vu là me donnerait grande envie de connaître à fond la peinture anglaise.”

Berthe Morisot Letter to Edma Pontillon, from 51 Manchester Street, London, August 1875.

The Isle of Wight had been a fashionable destination ever since 1845 when Queen Victoria acquired an estate at East Cowes as the site for her palatial seaside retreat Osborne House, completed in 1851.

Queen Victoria used Osborne as a holiday home for over 50 years until her death there in 1901, and entertained foreign royalty and visiting ministers at Osborne. The minutiae of her movements occasioned detailed commentary in the local press, and her presence attracted the wealthy nobility and gentry.

Other distinguished Victorian residents included the Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, and the artist George Frederick Watts.

The largest town on the island was Ryde, but West Cowes, across the River Medina from East Cowes and Osborne House, was the most fashionable resort, especially during the regatta season which coincided with the Morisot-Manets’ visit. Cowes was the principal port of the Isle of Wight. Globe Cottage, where Berthe and Eugène stayed, was a self-contained cottage within the Globe Hotel, perfectly situated on the Parade just a short distance from the headquarters of the Royal Yacht Squadron at West Cowes Castle and with uninterrupted views of the yachts and steamboats entering the harbour.

The cottage, with its picket fence, front garden and sash windows (as depicted by Morisot), is clearly recognisable in a newspaper illustration published in The Graphic on 7 October 1876 following freak whirlwind damage [fig. 19]. The Globe was one of seven West Cowes hotels recommended in Shaw’s Tourist’s Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight (1878).3 The same establishments are listed in Bradbury’s The Isle of Wight: How to See it for Six Guineas (1887).4

Fig. 19 The Effects of the Whirlwind at West Cowes, published in The Graphic (1876) Engraving

AN ENGLISH SUMMER It is a challenge to establish the Morisot-Manets’ exact itinerary in England. Surviving letters associated with the visit are in some cases undated and do not record all the details of their route. We do know, however, that their honeymoon incorporated two of the most highly anticipated events of the English summer season: they spent one day at Goodwood Races (27–30 July 1875) before crossing to the Isle of Wight, where their visit coincided with the Royal Yacht Squadron Regatta (3–6 August 1875). The itinerary was in part spontaneous. In an undated letter, Morisot’s sister Edma wrote: ‘I have seen only your first letter, my dear Berthe, and I was glad to hear that merely following your instinct you had gone to the Isle of Wight.’5

Amongst Morisot’s papers in the archive of the Musée Marmottan Monet, is an unsigned and undated sheet, previously unpublished, containing notes about possible places to stay on England’s south coast that appears to record recommendations given to the couple:

Amongst the towns of the south coast, Worthing (Sussex) between Arundel Castle and Brighton, and Saint Léonard [St Leonards-on-Sea]. The country is particularly beautiful around St Léonard but the pebble beach is less pleasant than that of Worthing and especially the delicate beaches of the Isle of Wight; Sandown, Shanklin and Ventnor; all these places abound in furnished houses. Rentals are by the week…

At Saint Léonard and on the Isle of Wight the stay in a boarding house is 6 to 8 shillings per person per day.

This is followed by notes on Llandudno in Wales (‘sea, mountains, greenery’), Tunbridge Wells in Kent (‘a charming residence about as far from London as Fontainebleau from Paris’), and pencilled names of places on Jersey, suggesting that their honeymoon could have taken them to various different destinations. 6

43

“The things I saw gave me a great desire to become thoroughly acquainted with English painting.”

BERTHE MORISOT

ON THE ISLE OF WIGHT In August 1875 Berthe Morisot painted her husband Eugène Manet looking out through the open sitting-room window of Globe Cottage at West Cowes on the Isle of Wight [cat. 2]. He gazes across a flower-filled front garden and green picket fence onto the Parade, where a smartly dressed nanny escorts a little girl in pinafore and straw hat, and beyond them to the yachts and steamboat gathered at the pier. The couple had married on 22 December 1874, and this was their honeymoon. Morisot had long wanted to visit England. During childhood her English governess Louisa had introduced the family to the English custom of birthday cakes trimmed with candles and instilled in her a precocious taste for English literature.1 Eugène twists around on his chair, boater and blazer on, ready to go out.

Morisot noted affectionately that he was an impatient model, writing to her sister Edma, who had often modelled for her in the past: ‘I began something in the sitting room, of Eugène. The poor man has taken your place. But he is a less obliging model; at once it becomes too much for him.’2

Morisot conveys spontaneity, but this is a sophisticated composition with a strong grid structure set within a framework of silvery greys, Eugène’s restless form balanced by the billowing curtain on the right. The figures outside are precisely positioned: the woman’s face is obscured, but her proportions are neatly marked by the sash window at her shoulder and fence at her wrist, while her black waistband is aligned with the tarred vessels at the pier. The girl continues the vertical of the windowpane and her white pinafore echoes in miniature the curtains bordering the composition. Painted from inside looking out, the picture encapsulates Morisot’s position as a new visitor to the island: hesitant to set up her easel in public, but alert to visual possibilities.

42

“Ce que j’ai vu là me donnerait grande envie de connaître à fond la peinture anglaise.”

Berthe Morisot Letter to Edma Pontillon, from 51 Manchester Street, London, August 1875.

The Isle of Wight had been a fashionable destination ever since 1845 when Queen Victoria acquired an estate at East Cowes as the site for her palatial seaside retreat Osborne House, completed in 1851.

Queen Victoria used Osborne as a holiday home for over 50 years until her death there in 1901, and entertained foreign royalty and visiting ministers at Osborne. The minutiae of her movements occasioned detailed commentary in the local press, and her presence attracted the wealthy nobility and gentry.

Other distinguished Victorian residents included the Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, and the artist George Frederick Watts.

The largest town on the island was Ryde, but West Cowes, across the River Medina from East Cowes and Osborne House, was the most fashionable resort, especially during the regatta season which coincided with the Morisot-Manets’ visit. Cowes was the principal port of the Isle of Wight. Globe Cottage, where Berthe and Eugène stayed, was a self-contained cottage within the Globe Hotel, perfectly situated on the Parade just a short distance from the headquarters of the Royal Yacht Squadron at West Cowes Castle and with uninterrupted views of the yachts and steamboats entering the harbour.

The cottage, with its picket fence, front garden and sash windows (as depicted by Morisot), is clearly recognisable in a newspaper illustration published in The Graphic on 7 October 1876 following freak whirlwind damage [fig. 19]. The Globe was one of seven West Cowes hotels recommended in Shaw’s Tourist’s Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight (1878).3 The same establishments are listed in Bradbury’s The Isle of Wight: How to See it for Six Guineas (1887).4

Fig. 19 The Effects of the Whirlwind at West Cowes, published in The Graphic (1876) Engraving

AN ENGLISH SUMMER It is a challenge to establish the Morisot-Manets’ exact itinerary in England. Surviving letters associated with the visit are in some cases undated and do not record all the details of their route. We do know, however, that their honeymoon incorporated two of the most highly anticipated events of the English summer season: they spent one day at Goodwood Races (27–30 July 1875) before crossing to the Isle of Wight, where their visit coincided with the Royal Yacht Squadron Regatta (3–6 August 1875). The itinerary was in part spontaneous. In an undated letter, Morisot’s sister Edma wrote: ‘I have seen only your first letter, my dear Berthe, and I was glad to hear that merely following your instinct you had gone to the Isle of Wight.’5

Amongst Morisot’s papers in the archive of the Musée Marmottan Monet, is an unsigned and undated sheet, previously unpublished, containing notes about possible places to stay on England’s south coast that appears to record recommendations given to the couple:

Amongst the towns of the south coast, Worthing (Sussex) between Arundel Castle and Brighton, and Saint Léonard [St Leonards-on-Sea]. The country is particularly beautiful around St Léonard but the pebble beach is less pleasant than that of Worthing and especially the delicate beaches of the Isle of Wight; Sandown, Shanklin and Ventnor; all these places abound in furnished houses. Rentals are by the week…

At Saint Léonard and on the Isle of Wight the stay in a boarding house is 6 to 8 shillings per person per day.

This is followed by notes on Llandudno in Wales (‘sea, mountains, greenery’), Tunbridge Wells in Kent (‘a charming residence about as far from London as Fontainebleau from Paris’), and pencilled names of places on Jersey, suggesting that their honeymoon could have taken them to various different destinations. 6

43

A DAY AT T H E R AC E S The Morisot-Manets almost certainly arrived at Goodwood directly via the South Coast, perhaps crossing the Channel from Le Havre to Portsmouth. It was also easy to access Goodwood from London: the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway ran special trains for racegoers, with options advertised in The Sporting Gazette.7 The London Evening Standard evoked Goodwood’s enticing attractions:

The meet at Goodwood which may be accepted as a token of the close of the season never opened under circumstances more auspicious. The weather yesterday was charming; the course was in capital condition; the landscape – and there are few more beautiful in broad England – looked to perfection; and the company which gathered on the Grand Stand and in the Lawn, if small by comparison with what is seen at Epsom and Ascot, or at Goodwood itself on the Cup-day, was unexceptionable in quality… A day in the green fields, with all the refreshing sights of a rich Nature in its midsummer garb, the salt savour of a gentle wind rising from where the Channel spreads on the edge of the horizon and shines like a mirror in the sunlight – a pleasant chat with an old friend, or a pleasanter promenade with some fair relative; the critical inspection (if one is so minded) of female beauty or female dress; a picnic on the grass by the beeches… and last, but by no means least, the presence of many members of the Royal family are attractions of a high order, and would well repay the journey to Sussex, even if there were no neck-and-neck runs between the choicest of thoroughbreds.8 Morisot is unlikely to have attended Goodwood on the first day (Tuesday 27 July), when the Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle reported that there were fewer visitors than usual due to recent inclement weather. The third day was the most memorable, combining glorious weather with some thrillingly unexpected race results: Sporting critics say that there has not been, in the memory of the oldest turfite at Goodwood, a Cup Day which saw so many favourites defeated as today. This means something pleasant for the bookmakers, who, by all account, are so often the victims of ill-fate that a day of luck like this is a beneficent surprise which all sympathising people should rejoice in… Earth and sky combined to favour the occasion, the only drawback as to the sky being a decided inability on the part of the white clouds that flocked the blue overhead to shelter us from a fierce dog-day sun, and the only drawback as to the earth being the carnival of dust which infested the neighbourhood of high-roads.9

44

Whichever of the four race days Morisot attended, she might have glimpsed the royal party, led by the Prince and Princess of Wales. Unlike her friend Edgar Degas, Morisot had no interest in horse racing. For her, the attraction was the society spectacle, as she wrote to Edma: ‘I am sending you an article on Goodwood to give you an idea of its splendours. I was enchanted by my day there, but it was rather costly – though I shall tell the mamans the opposite – and horribly fatiguing. Never in my life have I seen anything as picturesque as those outdoor luncheons.’10

T H E R OYA L YAC H T S Q UA D R O N R E G AT TA From Goodwood, it was straightforward to access the Isle of Wight. Morisot and her husband almost certainly crossed the Solent from Southampton to West Cowes, the route that she recommended to Edma when she was planning a UK visit in 1888.11 The railway ran directly onto the pier at Southampton where travellers could step onto one of the steamers operated by the Southampton, Isle of Wight and South of England Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. The crossing to Cowes is described in Shaw’s Tourist’s Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight (1878):

The approach to this town from the water is perhaps the most picturesque that can be imagined. The Solent here is so land-locked that, except during storms of unusual severity, it is remarkably smooth… To the east are verdant shores wooded to the water’s edge, with the picturesque houses of East Cowes scattered among the trees. On the west is the Marine Parade of West Cowes, with its castle, and many elegant villas on the rising ground in the rear; while directly in front is the river, with its forest of masts, from which float the flags of all nations.12

days two and three, which saw some of the closest races on record. Festivities culminated on 6 August with the Town Regatta: About five o’clock the Royal Yacht, the Victoria and Albert, steamed in amongst the fleet of yachts, and the Newport town band, which was stationed on the green, played the National Anthem. The Royal Yacht, H.M.S. Monarch, and most of the craft in the roadstead were dressed in bunting from stern to stern.’14 For the Morisot-Manets, Globe Cottage provided a perfect base from which to enjoy the sights of Regatta Week, a subject that had already attracted Morisot’s fellow artist and compatriot James Tissot, who had relocated to London in 1871 to escape the Franco-Prussian war.

Tissot’s The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874) [cat. 1], exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, depicts guests on board a man-of-war at Spithead, converted into a ballroom by an awning adorned with flags. After visiting Tissot at his London studio home later in August, Berthe wrote to Edma: ‘Tissot tells me that during the regatta week at Cowes we saw the most fashionable society in England.’15

‘ TO CA P T U R E S O M E T H I N G O F W H AT G O E S B Y ’ Morisot found it easiest to work in watercolour when outdoors in public, and her English artworks include lively watercolours depicting harbour activity, encapsulating her desire (as she later expressed it) ‘to capture something of what goes by’ [fig. 20].16 As she explained to Edma: ‘The little river here is full of boats, a little like the river at Dartmouth in the photographs Tiburce sent us. I am sure you would like all this very much, and that it would even give you a desire to start working again. The beach is like an English park plus the sea; I shall have to make a watercolour of it, for I shall never have the courage to set up my easel to do it in oil.’17

Morisot also made oil sketches of passers-by on the Parade, viewed from the upstairs front window of Globe Cottage. Far less resolved than her composition of Eugène in the sitting room, these are swift provisional sketches, their subjects unaware of their role as models for the Impressionist painter looking down from above.

Yet Morisot still finds visual connections. View of the Solent Strait [Isle of Wight] or Seascape in England (1875) [fig. 21] depicts women and girls on the Parade, turned at

Fig. 20 Boat on the Quay (1875) Watercolour on paper 17 × 23 cm

By the time the Morisot-Manets arrived, Queen Victoria was already in residence and the regatta season was underway.

Berthe described to Edma the fashionable crowd arriving at the Royal Yacht Squadron Club House: ‘Cowes has become extremely animated; a few days ago the whole of the smart set landed from a yacht. The garden of the Yacht Club is full of ladies of fashion. At high tide there is an extraordinary bustle.’13 Racing took place from Tuesday 3 August until Friday 6 August. It was, as noted in the Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle, a major sporting event of the season: The Royal Yacht Squadron is the premier club of the kingdom, and can boast of a fleet of yachts not to be equalled anywhere in the world. The head-quarters, as is well known, are at Cowes: and on this occasion the roadstead presents an appearance of unusual gaiety, for nearly every club in the kingdom is represented.

The first race day got off to a slow start due to calm weather. There was a great deal more excitement on

45

A DAY AT T H E R AC E S The Morisot-Manets almost certainly arrived at Goodwood directly via the South Coast, perhaps crossing the Channel from Le Havre to Portsmouth. It was also easy to access Goodwood from London: the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway ran special trains for racegoers, with options advertised in The Sporting Gazette.7 The London Evening Standard evoked Goodwood’s enticing attractions:

The meet at Goodwood which may be accepted as a token of the close of the season never opened under circumstances more auspicious. The weather yesterday was charming; the course was in capital condition; the landscape – and there are few more beautiful in broad England – looked to perfection; and the company which gathered on the Grand Stand and in the Lawn, if small by comparison with what is seen at Epsom and Ascot, or at Goodwood itself on the Cup-day, was unexceptionable in quality… A day in the green fields, with all the refreshing sights of a rich Nature in its midsummer garb, the salt savour of a gentle wind rising from where the Channel spreads on the edge of the horizon and shines like a mirror in the sunlight – a pleasant chat with an old friend, or a pleasanter promenade with some fair relative; the critical inspection (if one is so minded) of female beauty or female dress; a picnic on the grass by the beeches… and last, but by no means least, the presence of many members of the Royal family are attractions of a high order, and would well repay the journey to Sussex, even if there were no neck-and-neck runs between the choicest of thoroughbreds.8 Morisot is unlikely to have attended Goodwood on the first day (Tuesday 27 July), when the Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle reported that there were fewer visitors than usual due to recent inclement weather. The third day was the most memorable, combining glorious weather with some thrillingly unexpected race results: Sporting critics say that there has not been, in the memory of the oldest turfite at Goodwood, a Cup Day which saw so many favourites defeated as today. This means something pleasant for the bookmakers, who, by all account, are so often the victims of ill-fate that a day of luck like this is a beneficent surprise which all sympathising people should rejoice in… Earth and sky combined to favour the occasion, the only drawback as to the sky being a decided inability on the part of the white clouds that flocked the blue overhead to shelter us from a fierce dog-day sun, and the only drawback as to the earth being the carnival of dust which infested the neighbourhood of high-roads.9

44

Whichever of the four race days Morisot attended, she might have glimpsed the royal party, led by the Prince and Princess of Wales. Unlike her friend Edgar Degas, Morisot had no interest in horse racing. For her, the attraction was the society spectacle, as she wrote to Edma: ‘I am sending you an article on Goodwood to give you an idea of its splendours. I was enchanted by my day there, but it was rather costly – though I shall tell the mamans the opposite – and horribly fatiguing. Never in my life have I seen anything as picturesque as those outdoor luncheons.’10

T H E R OYA L YAC H T S Q UA D R O N R E G AT TA From Goodwood, it was straightforward to access the Isle of Wight. Morisot and her husband almost certainly crossed the Solent from Southampton to West Cowes, the route that she recommended to Edma when she was planning a UK visit in 1888.11 The railway ran directly onto the pier at Southampton where travellers could step onto one of the steamers operated by the Southampton, Isle of Wight and South of England Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. The crossing to Cowes is described in Shaw’s Tourist’s Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight (1878):

The approach to this town from the water is perhaps the most picturesque that can be imagined. The Solent here is so land-locked that, except during storms of unusual severity, it is remarkably smooth… To the east are verdant shores wooded to the water’s edge, with the picturesque houses of East Cowes scattered among the trees. On the west is the Marine Parade of West Cowes, with its castle, and many elegant villas on the rising ground in the rear; while directly in front is the river, with its forest of masts, from which float the flags of all nations.12

days two and three, which saw some of the closest races on record. Festivities culminated on 6 August with the Town Regatta: About five o’clock the Royal Yacht, the Victoria and Albert, steamed in amongst the fleet of yachts, and the Newport town band, which was stationed on the green, played the National Anthem. The Royal Yacht, H.M.S. Monarch, and most of the craft in the roadstead were dressed in bunting from stern to stern.’14 For the Morisot-Manets, Globe Cottage provided a perfect base from which to enjoy the sights of Regatta Week, a subject that had already attracted Morisot’s fellow artist and compatriot James Tissot, who had relocated to London in 1871 to escape the Franco-Prussian war.

Tissot’s The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874) [cat. 1], exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, depicts guests on board a man-of-war at Spithead, converted into a ballroom by an awning adorned with flags. After visiting Tissot at his London studio home later in August, Berthe wrote to Edma: ‘Tissot tells me that during the regatta week at Cowes we saw the most fashionable society in England.’15

‘ TO CA P T U R E S O M E T H I N G O F W H AT G O E S B Y ’ Morisot found it easiest to work in watercolour when outdoors in public, and her English artworks include lively watercolours depicting harbour activity, encapsulating her desire (as she later expressed it) ‘to capture something of what goes by’ [fig. 20].16 As she explained to Edma: ‘The little river here is full of boats, a little like the river at Dartmouth in the photographs Tiburce sent us. I am sure you would like all this very much, and that it would even give you a desire to start working again. The beach is like an English park plus the sea; I shall have to make a watercolour of it, for I shall never have the courage to set up my easel to do it in oil.’17

Morisot also made oil sketches of passers-by on the Parade, viewed from the upstairs front window of Globe Cottage. Far less resolved than her composition of Eugène in the sitting room, these are swift provisional sketches, their subjects unaware of their role as models for the Impressionist painter looking down from above.

Yet Morisot still finds visual connections. View of the Solent Strait [Isle of Wight] or Seascape in England (1875) [fig. 21] depicts women and girls on the Parade, turned at

Fig. 20 Boat on the Quay (1875) Watercolour on paper 17 × 23 cm

By the time the Morisot-Manets arrived, Queen Victoria was already in residence and the regatta season was underway.

Berthe described to Edma the fashionable crowd arriving at the Royal Yacht Squadron Club House: ‘Cowes has become extremely animated; a few days ago the whole of the smart set landed from a yacht. The garden of the Yacht Club is full of ladies of fashion. At high tide there is an extraordinary bustle.’13 Racing took place from Tuesday 3 August until Friday 6 August. It was, as noted in the Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle, a major sporting event of the season: The Royal Yacht Squadron is the premier club of the kingdom, and can boast of a fleet of yachts not to be equalled anywhere in the world. The head-quarters, as is well known, are at Cowes: and on this occasion the roadstead presents an appearance of unusual gaiety, for nearly every club in the kingdom is represented.

The first race day got off to a slow start due to calm weather. There was a great deal more excitement on

45

“Explaining how a painting is made might interest onlookers because they will never understand anything, not technical words like chiaroscuro, halftones, many incomprehensible things on which even painters should be required to take an exam before reproducing them.

Real painters only understand with a brush in their hands…

Is this vulgarisation of art really necessary…?

There are certainly some simple notions that everyone can understand.

They were known in the last century and even workaday painters applied them with a nice artistic feeling, because in those days life was easy.1 ” BERTHE MORISOT

“Raconter comment la peinture est faite intéressera peut-être les badauds parce qu’ils n’y comprendront jamais rien, les mots valeurs, clair-obscur, demi-teintes, autant d’hiéroglyphes sur lesquels il faudrait d’ailleurs faire passer un examen aux peintres avant de les imprimer.

Les vrais s’entendent le pinceau à la main…

Est-ce bien nécessaire cette vulgarisation de l’art…? Il y a évidemment quelques notions simples bien accessibles à tous.

Elles étaient connues au siècle dernier et appliquées par les ouvriers mêmes avec un joli sentiment artistique, parce que dans ce temps là la vie était facile…”

Berthe Morisot Carnet de Mézy (also known as Carnet noir), 1891

62

Fig. 28 Marcello (Adèle d’Affry, Duchess of Castiglione-Colonna) Portrait of Berthe Morisot (1875) Oil on canvas 165 × 113 cm

63

“Explaining how a painting is made might interest onlookers because they will never understand anything, not technical words like chiaroscuro, halftones, many incomprehensible things on which even painters should be required to take an exam before reproducing them.

Real painters only understand with a brush in their hands…

Is this vulgarisation of art really necessary…?

There are certainly some simple notions that everyone can understand.

They were known in the last century and even workaday painters applied them with a nice artistic feeling, because in those days life was easy.1 ” BERTHE MORISOT

“Raconter comment la peinture est faite intéressera peut-être les badauds parce qu’ils n’y comprendront jamais rien, les mots valeurs, clair-obscur, demi-teintes, autant d’hiéroglyphes sur lesquels il faudrait d’ailleurs faire passer un examen aux peintres avant de les imprimer.

Les vrais s’entendent le pinceau à la main…

Est-ce bien nécessaire cette vulgarisation de l’art…? Il y a évidemment quelques notions simples bien accessibles à tous.

Elles étaient connues au siècle dernier et appliquées par les ouvriers mêmes avec un joli sentiment artistique, parce que dans ce temps là la vie était facile…”

Berthe Morisot Carnet de Mézy (also known as Carnet noir), 1891

62

Fig. 28 Marcello (Adèle d’Affry, Duchess of Castiglione-Colonna) Portrait of Berthe Morisot (1875) Oil on canvas 165 × 113 cm

63

When the sculptor Adèle d’Affry, Duchess of Castiglione Colonna (1836–1879), also known by the pseudonym Marcello, provided letters of introduction to the London collections for Berthe Morisot in April 1875, she was painting, among other things, a full-length portrait of Morisot in a ball gown [fig. 28] leaning against the back of a chair, her torso twisted, giving an air of nonchalance and immediacy. Preceeded by a finished study in pastel,2 Marcello had started work on the oil on 10 January 1875,3 intending to exhibit it at the Salon,4 but it was not shown and was only finished the following winter.5 In truth, Marcello had, in March, on the advice of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte (1820–1904), sought the advice of the painter Léon Bonnat (1833–1922), who discouraged her from exhibiting the painting and strongly criticised her artistic choice with regard to chiaroscuro: ‘He [Bonnat] belongs to the school that refutes Boucher, Delacroix, Watteau, etc.,’ she wrote.6 This comment reveals the masters she had chosen for herself, and in particular for her Portrait of Berthe Morisot, who were far from Bonnat and his ‘cold modelling’.7 The two women artists had agreed on her use of chiaroscuro and colour, reflecting what they admired in Watteau and Boucher, whose subtle half-tones and values they both appreciated.

It is known that Morisot was a student of Jean-BaptisteCamille Corot (1796–1875) from 1860, before studying with his pupil Achille-François Oudinot (1820–1891) from 1863. However, for her theoretical and practical training, Léon Riesener (1808–1878), Eugène Delacroix’s (1793–1863) cousin, deserves recognition.8 Like Marcello who had lived at Riesener’s house,9 Morisot undoubtedly benefited from his advice as a regular visitor there. She assimilated the writings of the master,10 who was a supporter of ‘bright’ and fresh colours, with visible brushstrokes, like sketches, and of light, giving the impression of full sunlight. He also preferred ‘reflections’ creating ‘coloured shadows’, and ‘greens’ on pink faces,11 principles that Morisot obeyed. She could also have seen Riesener making pastel portraits of his daughters and their young children from 1864 to 1868.12 Although Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) and Édouard Manet (1832–1883) also used pastels and could have advised her, Riesener’s proximity was probably crucial, as one of the most prominent pastel artists of the Salon and, moreover, an artist eager to pass on his knowledge.

A N AC C O M P L I S H E D PA S T E L L I S T Between her first landscapes of 186413 and her portrait of a Girl with Hyacinths (1872)14 Morisot became an accomplished pastellist. Her pastel studies were done with the same speed as that required of painting in the open

64

air, to which she was also accustomed.15Drawing on his childhood memories, Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861–1942) remembered Morisot in around 1867, ‘sitting on a folding chair’ in the middle of the village of Passy, painting ‘with pastels in the open air’.16 It was a pastel depicting her pregnant sister, Madame Edma Pontillon née Edma Morisot that made Morisot known to art lovers and the public at the 1872 Salon, although it was hung too high.17 A critic, and friend of Fantin-Latour, bemoaned this when he described it as ‘one of the most skilful works of the Salon’.18 The painter Jean-Jacques Henner (1829–1905) also praised it to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898), who wrote in an unpublished letter: ‘Your pastel was found to be very pretty, including

by Henner, who is a real painter and a true artist. You’ll see that he will portray you very well.’19 The restrained expression, the calm of the subject’s hands against the black garment, the vertical movement of the background directly above her head, have parallels with the unfinished portrait in oil of Morisot’s sister, Yves, painted by Degas at the home of their mother, Cornélie Morisot.20 Here, Morisot has used pastel on paper in a way that justified the eighteenth-century term ‘peindre au pastel’ (to ‘paint’ in pastel). Common during the Louis XV period, the expression described a solid technique, like painting, leaving no untouched areas of the sheet of paper visible.

Morisot used dry and semi-hard pastels, which she worked wet with a brush, or using both techniques: dry and wet.

The sitter’s face, seen frontally, is shaded with green-brown at the right temple. The eyelids are highlighted with sanguine pastel. Her treatment of blacks, retouched with dark blue, renders the opacity and transparency of two different fabrics.

As proof of Morisot’s talent, Édouard Manet wanted to procure commissions for her to create children’s portraits in pastel.21 After becoming her brother-in-law, Manet gave her a Christmas present of a box of the precious sticks in 1879 and the following year a ‘new model of easel, very convenient for pastel’.22 Morisot exhibited the pastel portrait of a young cousin, Madeleine Thomas, in mourning for her father, at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.23 Its manner is sketchier, allowing the untouched paper to appear at the edges.

Her study focused on the lustre of the model’s red hair, enhanced by the black of a velvet ribbon, the lightly treated purple background and a green parrot. Morisot especially liked this pose in profil perdu (a subject viewed partially from behind) which was less common among painters of the nineteenth century, and she often started her studies of sitters with this pose, before choosing a frontal or three-quarter view.

A P R O F E S S E D TA S T E F O R T H E EIGHTEENTH CENTURY As we have seen, Morisot belonged to a society that took pride in perpetuating an eighteenth-century style of living that was brilliantly embodied by Léon Riesener and the Duchess Colonna (1823–1912). This was a key element of her culture and an anchor of her artistic training and it is against this reality, strengthened by these traditions, that her rediscovery of the French painters of the eighteenth century must be seen. This art, which became fashionable again in the nineteenth century, resonated with Morisot on an intimate and familiar level. She meditated on the masterpieces of the eighteenth century, which she discovered in the same way as her contemporaries, first at the Galerie Martinet exhibition in 1860, then in Madrid in 1872, in England in 1875 and at the Louvre in the La Caze collection rooms. Morisot absorbed, instilled and transformed these historical references in her work – something that Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) observed when he noted that she ‘has all the lightness expected of the craft with a touch of the eighteenth century, magnified by the present’.24

F R AG M E N T E D M E M O R I E S O F T H E EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Far from any citation, Morisot brought into her compositions motifs from the eighteenth century familiar to her. She transformed details into her main subject, for example her partial copies after Boucher’s Venus Asking Vulcan for Arms (1883–1884) [cat. 12]25 and Apollo Revealing his Divinity to the Shepherdess Issé (1892) [cat. 39].26

The connection between Watteau’s female figures seen from the back and the silhouette of Morisot’s sister gracefully lifting her dress in Young Woman Watering a Shrub (1876) [cat. 5] has been noted several times. Morisot’s liberty with respect to these images should be highlighted. Here Watteau’s silk has disappeared, replaced with muslin. No frail shoulders, but instead an assertive stature. Perhaps the most eighteenth-century aspect of the scene lies in the blurring of social characteristics. An English traveller arriving in Paris from London in 1739 complained that it was impossible to distinguish a lady of high society from a servant in the street, with maids imitating the way their mistresses dressed in every detail. This ‘blurring of appearances’ runs through Morisot’s entire oeuvre.27 Morisot mentions portraits of ‘Madame de Pompadour

by Boucher’ in her notebook.28 In 1860, Galerie Martinet exhibited a portrait of Pompadour in a yellow silk dress in front of an easel,29 and a second, larger one, painted in 1756 [fig. 29].30 The latter work offers a range of motifs typical of the eighteenth century including many details that Morisot would also have been able to see separately

in paintings by contemporaries of Boucher. This appetite for the previous century is even visible in Morisot’s clothing. At the age of 20, refusing to wear the black boots fashionable at the time, she adopted the satin shoes of La Pompadour as a symbol of her own sartorial elegance. This footwear was highlighted by Édouard Manet in Berthe Morisot with a Fan,31 which Jacques-Emile Blanche renamed Young Woman wearing Pink Shoes.32 Above all, it is in her art that Morisot showed her attraction to the eighteenth century. From the great portrait of La Pompadour, she adopted the reflection of the nape of Pompadour’s neck, hair tied back, cropped by the mirror frame. She seems to recall this memory in The Mirror (La Psyché) (1876) [cat. 8]. In 1880, Morisot made it the main subject of Woman at Her Toilette in which a model is featured seen from the back [cat. 7]. Long afterwards, while visiting the Louvre, she even sketched a King Charles spaniel for her daughter Julie,33 this time seen at Marie Leszczynska’s feet in her portrait by Carle van Loo (1705–1765).34 The writing table decorated with gilt bronze and marquetry of flowers in Boucher’s Madame de Pompadour is echoed

by Morisot in her Portrait of Madame Escholier née Louise Riesener [fig. 15, p. 35; cat. 27, for full image] (1888).

The wainscoting featured in this monumental painting inspired the panelling she installed in the living room of her townhouse. In October 1891, she and her husband acquired the Château du Mesnil, its walls decorated with this kind of panelling.

A S S I M I L AT I O N O F T H E E I G H T E E N T H C E N T U R Y IN THE ARTIST ’S TECHNIQUE Morisot’s most fertile relationship with the eighteenth century was maintained in her practice and technique. She scrutinised the art of the painters and pastellists of the previous century and paid particular attention to their craft. Eugène Manet went in search of texts that would explain this art.

During a lecture at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, the painter Louis Tocqué (1696–1772) explained ‘the law of reflections’ deduced from the observation of nature. According to this rule, a shadow takes on the colour of the illuminated area next to it, the ‘hard and uniform’ colour of the shadow thus ‘becomes pleasant from a borrowed softness, but without hurting nature’.35 The shaded areas of a face were therefore coloured with reflected browns and greens or lit according to their surroundings.

In the nineteenth century, the Goncourt brothers showed off about greens arising on the pink complexion in a portrait of a man wearing a grey costume by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (c. 1716–1783) in the Louvre.36 Similar reflections are visible under the sitter’s chin in Marie-Anne Huquier Holding a Cat, displayed in the Louvre since 1870 [fig. 30].37

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When the sculptor Adèle d’Affry, Duchess of Castiglione Colonna (1836–1879), also known by the pseudonym Marcello, provided letters of introduction to the London collections for Berthe Morisot in April 1875, she was painting, among other things, a full-length portrait of Morisot in a ball gown [fig. 28] leaning against the back of a chair, her torso twisted, giving an air of nonchalance and immediacy. Preceeded by a finished study in pastel,2 Marcello had started work on the oil on 10 January 1875,3 intending to exhibit it at the Salon,4 but it was not shown and was only finished the following winter.5 In truth, Marcello had, in March, on the advice of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte (1820–1904), sought the advice of the painter Léon Bonnat (1833–1922), who discouraged her from exhibiting the painting and strongly criticised her artistic choice with regard to chiaroscuro: ‘He [Bonnat] belongs to the school that refutes Boucher, Delacroix, Watteau, etc.,’ she wrote.6 This comment reveals the masters she had chosen for herself, and in particular for her Portrait of Berthe Morisot, who were far from Bonnat and his ‘cold modelling’.7 The two women artists had agreed on her use of chiaroscuro and colour, reflecting what they admired in Watteau and Boucher, whose subtle half-tones and values they both appreciated.

It is known that Morisot was a student of Jean-BaptisteCamille Corot (1796–1875) from 1860, before studying with his pupil Achille-François Oudinot (1820–1891) from 1863. However, for her theoretical and practical training, Léon Riesener (1808–1878), Eugène Delacroix’s (1793–1863) cousin, deserves recognition.8 Like Marcello who had lived at Riesener’s house,9 Morisot undoubtedly benefited from his advice as a regular visitor there. She assimilated the writings of the master,10 who was a supporter of ‘bright’ and fresh colours, with visible brushstrokes, like sketches, and of light, giving the impression of full sunlight. He also preferred ‘reflections’ creating ‘coloured shadows’, and ‘greens’ on pink faces,11 principles that Morisot obeyed. She could also have seen Riesener making pastel portraits of his daughters and their young children from 1864 to 1868.12 Although Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) and Édouard Manet (1832–1883) also used pastels and could have advised her, Riesener’s proximity was probably crucial, as one of the most prominent pastel artists of the Salon and, moreover, an artist eager to pass on his knowledge.

A N AC C O M P L I S H E D PA S T E L L I S T Between her first landscapes of 186413 and her portrait of a Girl with Hyacinths (1872)14 Morisot became an accomplished pastellist. Her pastel studies were done with the same speed as that required of painting in the open

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air, to which she was also accustomed.15Drawing on his childhood memories, Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861–1942) remembered Morisot in around 1867, ‘sitting on a folding chair’ in the middle of the village of Passy, painting ‘with pastels in the open air’.16 It was a pastel depicting her pregnant sister, Madame Edma Pontillon née Edma Morisot that made Morisot known to art lovers and the public at the 1872 Salon, although it was hung too high.17 A critic, and friend of Fantin-Latour, bemoaned this when he described it as ‘one of the most skilful works of the Salon’.18 The painter Jean-Jacques Henner (1829–1905) also praised it to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898), who wrote in an unpublished letter: ‘Your pastel was found to be very pretty, including

by Henner, who is a real painter and a true artist. You’ll see that he will portray you very well.’19 The restrained expression, the calm of the subject’s hands against the black garment, the vertical movement of the background directly above her head, have parallels with the unfinished portrait in oil of Morisot’s sister, Yves, painted by Degas at the home of their mother, Cornélie Morisot.20 Here, Morisot has used pastel on paper in a way that justified the eighteenth-century term ‘peindre au pastel’ (to ‘paint’ in pastel). Common during the Louis XV period, the expression described a solid technique, like painting, leaving no untouched areas of the sheet of paper visible.

Morisot used dry and semi-hard pastels, which she worked wet with a brush, or using both techniques: dry and wet.

The sitter’s face, seen frontally, is shaded with green-brown at the right temple. The eyelids are highlighted with sanguine pastel. Her treatment of blacks, retouched with dark blue, renders the opacity and transparency of two different fabrics.

As proof of Morisot’s talent, Édouard Manet wanted to procure commissions for her to create children’s portraits in pastel.21 After becoming her brother-in-law, Manet gave her a Christmas present of a box of the precious sticks in 1879 and the following year a ‘new model of easel, very convenient for pastel’.22 Morisot exhibited the pastel portrait of a young cousin, Madeleine Thomas, in mourning for her father, at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.23 Its manner is sketchier, allowing the untouched paper to appear at the edges.

Her study focused on the lustre of the model’s red hair, enhanced by the black of a velvet ribbon, the lightly treated purple background and a green parrot. Morisot especially liked this pose in profil perdu (a subject viewed partially from behind) which was less common among painters of the nineteenth century, and she often started her studies of sitters with this pose, before choosing a frontal or three-quarter view.

A P R O F E S S E D TA S T E F O R T H E EIGHTEENTH CENTURY As we have seen, Morisot belonged to a society that took pride in perpetuating an eighteenth-century style of living that was brilliantly embodied by Léon Riesener and the Duchess Colonna (1823–1912). This was a key element of her culture and an anchor of her artistic training and it is against this reality, strengthened by these traditions, that her rediscovery of the French painters of the eighteenth century must be seen. This art, which became fashionable again in the nineteenth century, resonated with Morisot on an intimate and familiar level. She meditated on the masterpieces of the eighteenth century, which she discovered in the same way as her contemporaries, first at the Galerie Martinet exhibition in 1860, then in Madrid in 1872, in England in 1875 and at the Louvre in the La Caze collection rooms. Morisot absorbed, instilled and transformed these historical references in her work – something that Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) observed when he noted that she ‘has all the lightness expected of the craft with a touch of the eighteenth century, magnified by the present’.24

F R AG M E N T E D M E M O R I E S O F T H E EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Far from any citation, Morisot brought into her compositions motifs from the eighteenth century familiar to her. She transformed details into her main subject, for example her partial copies after Boucher’s Venus Asking Vulcan for Arms (1883–1884) [cat. 12]25 and Apollo Revealing his Divinity to the Shepherdess Issé (1892) [cat. 39].26

The connection between Watteau’s female figures seen from the back and the silhouette of Morisot’s sister gracefully lifting her dress in Young Woman Watering a Shrub (1876) [cat. 5] has been noted several times. Morisot’s liberty with respect to these images should be highlighted. Here Watteau’s silk has disappeared, replaced with muslin. No frail shoulders, but instead an assertive stature. Perhaps the most eighteenth-century aspect of the scene lies in the blurring of social characteristics. An English traveller arriving in Paris from London in 1739 complained that it was impossible to distinguish a lady of high society from a servant in the street, with maids imitating the way their mistresses dressed in every detail. This ‘blurring of appearances’ runs through Morisot’s entire oeuvre.27 Morisot mentions portraits of ‘Madame de Pompadour

by Boucher’ in her notebook.28 In 1860, Galerie Martinet exhibited a portrait of Pompadour in a yellow silk dress in front of an easel,29 and a second, larger one, painted in 1756 [fig. 29].30 The latter work offers a range of motifs typical of the eighteenth century including many details that Morisot would also have been able to see separately

in paintings by contemporaries of Boucher. This appetite for the previous century is even visible in Morisot’s clothing. At the age of 20, refusing to wear the black boots fashionable at the time, she adopted the satin shoes of La Pompadour as a symbol of her own sartorial elegance. This footwear was highlighted by Édouard Manet in Berthe Morisot with a Fan,31 which Jacques-Emile Blanche renamed Young Woman wearing Pink Shoes.32 Above all, it is in her art that Morisot showed her attraction to the eighteenth century. From the great portrait of La Pompadour, she adopted the reflection of the nape of Pompadour’s neck, hair tied back, cropped by the mirror frame. She seems to recall this memory in The Mirror (La Psyché) (1876) [cat. 8]. In 1880, Morisot made it the main subject of Woman at Her Toilette in which a model is featured seen from the back [cat. 7]. Long afterwards, while visiting the Louvre, she even sketched a King Charles spaniel for her daughter Julie,33 this time seen at Marie Leszczynska’s feet in her portrait by Carle van Loo (1705–1765).34 The writing table decorated with gilt bronze and marquetry of flowers in Boucher’s Madame de Pompadour is echoed

by Morisot in her Portrait of Madame Escholier née Louise Riesener [fig. 15, p. 35; cat. 27, for full image] (1888).

The wainscoting featured in this monumental painting inspired the panelling she installed in the living room of her townhouse. In October 1891, she and her husband acquired the Château du Mesnil, its walls decorated with this kind of panelling.

A S S I M I L AT I O N O F T H E E I G H T E E N T H C E N T U R Y IN THE ARTIST ’S TECHNIQUE Morisot’s most fertile relationship with the eighteenth century was maintained in her practice and technique. She scrutinised the art of the painters and pastellists of the previous century and paid particular attention to their craft. Eugène Manet went in search of texts that would explain this art.

During a lecture at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, the painter Louis Tocqué (1696–1772) explained ‘the law of reflections’ deduced from the observation of nature. According to this rule, a shadow takes on the colour of the illuminated area next to it, the ‘hard and uniform’ colour of the shadow thus ‘becomes pleasant from a borrowed softness, but without hurting nature’.35 The shaded areas of a face were therefore coloured with reflected browns and greens or lit according to their surroundings.

In the nineteenth century, the Goncourt brothers showed off about greens arising on the pink complexion in a portrait of a man wearing a grey costume by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (c. 1716–1783) in the Louvre.36 Similar reflections are visible under the sitter’s chin in Marie-Anne Huquier Holding a Cat, displayed in the Louvre since 1870 [fig. 30].37

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Cat. 1 James Tissot The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874) Oil on canvas 84.1 × 129.5 cm Tate: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1937

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Cat. 1 James Tissot The Ball on Shipboard (c. 1874) Oil on canvas 84.1 × 129.5 cm Tate: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1937

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Cat. 18 Children with a Basin (1886) Oil on canvas 73 × 92 cm Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

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Cat. 18 Children with a Basin (1886) Oil on canvas 73 × 92 cm Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

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