Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism

Posted by Verity on April 25, 2023 in Art, Europe, Exhibition, Leisure activities | 2 comments

Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 10 September 2023

Yet again I feel moved to give thanks for serendipity: I had no idea when we moved to our present house 36 years ago that it was within walking distance of Dulwich Picture Gallery (in fact, the presence of small children in the house – my own, I hasten to add! – meant that it was some time before I even discovered its existence).

Over recent years there have been many fantastic exhibitions there – Tove Jansson, Vanessa Bell, Nikolai Astrup, MK Čiurlonis – but somehow the knowledge that there are paintings by Impressionist megastar Berthe Morisot just down the road is particularly thrilling.

I went along to the launch of the exhibition earlier this month, and it was by turns illuminating, moving – and convivial. At these events you can wander around the permanent collection with a glass of something in your hand – anything, in fact, as long as it’s not red wine. However, all drinks had to be relinquished before going in to see Berthe Morisot’s work. The Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, who have lent many of the paintings on display, would no doubt take a dim view of beer-stained canvasses being returned to them.

No matter – the works themselves are intoxicating enough. The sheer range of them is impressive, for a start: there are the domestic interiors that her most famous painting – her sister Edma gazing at her baby sleeping in its crib – would lead us to expect, but there are also plein-air pictures, scenes from Parisian life, and portraits formal and informal. A late work showing her daughter Julie sitting with the family dog next to the empty chair of Morisot’s deceased husband Eugène Manet is particularly poignant.

Morisot was renowned for the speed with which she painted, and here we have evidence of it in two open-air scenes (Summer’s Day being one of them) painted on the same day in 1879. There was a practical purpose to this swift execution: generally respectable women did not hang around outside in the public space, and the sight of one doing so was bound to attract attention. Morisot solved this dilemma by going out very early, taking a model/assistant with her and working quickly.

She has even painted this technique into one of her portraits: that of her niece and fellow artist Paule Gobillard. While the subject’s attention is still – focused intently on the image she is creating – a flurry of her characteristic swift, loose strokes captures her hand and brush as they move feverishly from palette to canvas.

A key theme of this exhibition is Morisot’s fondness for, and engagement with, 18th century art: Fragonard and Watteau in France, but then she discovered Gainsborough, Reynolds and Romney when she came to England on her honeymoon. Several of these paintings have been hung alongside her works so that we can see these direct correspondences – leading one critic to complain that of 43 pictures in the exhibition, 13 are not by her. It’s a valid point, but I think this major influence on her output is worth exploring. Some of the portraits are reworkings of the subject in her own style, and other paintings make more subtle reference to their predecessors: there is a charming, informal painting of a young woman, possibly Edma, in her shift watering a shrub on her terrace, and lifting the side of her shift with exactly the same gesture as the courtly dancer lifts her voluminous skirts in Watteau’s Les Plaisirs du Bal, which hangs next to it.

This is the largest exhibition of Morisot’s work in England for 70 years, and there is so much to enjoy that I know I’ll be going back, probably more than once.