Intersecting Lives: Two Female Impressionist Painters

Impressionist portraits of Mary Cassatt (l) & Berthe Morisot (r)

Some time ago I promised to do a comparison of two female painters who were contemporaries, and sometimes competitors, in Paris in the late 1800's. The American artist was Mary Cassatt and the native French artist was Berthe Morisot, who is less well-known in the United States.

Maternity, Mary Cassatt

In gathering information about the two of them, I encountered some discussion on the painting of children — one of Mary's specialties — from early times to the present. I considered touching on that subject briefly before turning to my two "principals", which led me to thinking about my own artwork regarding children and how I achieved relaxed, un-posed sketches. So, before this project got completely out of hand, I decided to save those topics for a later post.

Mary Cassatt, self-portrait

Mary Cassatt was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1844. She was the daughter of a wealthy banker, with whom she had a contentious relationship throughout their lives.  After attending the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she toured Europe, visiting France, Italy, Spain and Holland.  Always interested in art, she studied the work of the Old Masters, even paying for private lessons at the Louvre. When the prestigious Salon finally allowed women to submit work for showing, Cassatt was one of the first two American women whose work was accepted in 1868. (In deference to her father’s violent opposition to Mary becoming a professional artist, she entered her work under the name “Mary Stevenson”.) She returned home to Pennsylvania in 1870 to escape the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in Europe.

Degas, sculpture of a dancer

Chafing under her father’s refusal to support her artistic endeavors in any form, and her inability to sell her work in the U.S. due to the social mores of the time, in 1872 she returned to Paris for further study. She especially admired the work of Edgar Degas, known for his paintings of the ballet. He saw one of her works at the Paris Salon of 1874.  Both preferred detailed sketches to painting and Degas recognized her considerable ability.  They finally met in 1877, and began a friendship that was to last for many years. Although he was never her teacher, he made many useful suggestions and encouraged her to drop the conventional studies she felt dull and confining.

Cassatt, Mother Combing Her Child's Hair

At Degas's urging, she began to exhibit her work with the Impressionists.  Thereafter she devoted herself to subjects which reflected her interests, especially domestic scenes, children. and gardens.  Although Mary seems to have forsaken any interest in marrying and having a family of her own, she is probably best known for her paintings of mothers and their children.  She also painted ordinary people doing ordinary things.  Mary once claimed that she could paint an attractive picture of an unattractive subject.  And, as Sister Wendy Beckett, who chose two of Cassatt's paintings for her book of 1,000 masterpieces remarked, "After all, that's almost a definition of art." Both Cassatt and Degas broke away from the Impressionists in 1882, but she returned later and he continued to stay in touch with artists both in and out of the Impressionists.

Mary Cassatt, The Letter

Among her other influences were Japanese woodcuts, which were popular at the time. She tried very hard to interest other Americans who studied in or visited France in the work of the Impressionists, buying many of their works for herself, her family, and her friends.  She remained close friends with Degas. The two artists had similar social backgrounds and intellectual tastes.  She posed for several of his paintings. From 1912 onward she gradually lost her sight — as did Degas — and had to give up painting, though she continued to promote the work of younger American female artists and other suffragist causes.  On July 11, 1926, she died at a chateau near Beauvais, France.

Berthe Morisot, self-portrait

Berthe Morisot was born in 1841 in Bourges, France.  Her father, who had studied architecture, was an important government official.  Her mother had family connections to the important Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The family moved to Paris while Berthe was just a child. It was decided that all three sisters should have some training in art, while their brother followed their father's profession. The girls were taken to the Louvre, where they were introduced to the work of great artists from around the world.  One of the sisters left the group early, but the other two continued copying the works of the masters. They had to have a chaperone, were forbidden to speak to anyone,  and were refused entrance to certain exhibits. As she later did as a professional artist, Berthe made many quick sketches of everything that attracted her attention. This habit was useful to her later in her painting career because she could, for example, work on realistic spring or summer scenes even in the dead of winter.  Berthe had determined at an early age that she would make a career of being an artist, not just a hobby. After she finished working at the Louvre, she studied briefly with traditional teachers, but found the work unsatisfactory and moved on.

The Louvre

The Paris Salon held an annual juried art show. It was a government-sponsored body that housed the show, which was judged by the members of the Academy des Beau Arts.  Women were not at that time permitted to show their work. However, there was a special provision set up to thank the artists and others who worked at the Louvre.  Berthe was allowed to participate in that and received a certificate and other honors. She was promised a spot in that category for at least the next six years.   Women were eventually allowed to compete at the larger salon event.

Landscape sketch by Corot

From 1862 to 1868, she studied with Jean-Batiste Camille Corot, cementing a friendship which lasted for many years.  The first thing Corot, who was both a landscape painter and a figure painter, did was to make sure she became a plein-aire painter. That is, she learned to do her sketching and painting outdoors in the "plain air". This gave her painting a freer and more colorful approach and she often recommended it to other artists. (For more about the influence of Corot — whose paintings "hooked" me on art when I was a child — and his contemporaries, see our posts of February 19, 2018 and May 14, 2020.)

Morisot, Mother and Son in a Boat

When the Paris Salon finally opened to women,  Berthe entered the competition for most of the next decade, but refused to enter in one year's Salon because one of her paintings had been partially painted over by the judges without her knowledge or agreement.  Degas and other friends urged her to join with the Impressionists in a show that they had put together.  She did so, was very well received, and made many more friends. She did return to the Salon, but continued in her participation with the Impressionists. She single-handedly put together their first large exposition, as she would do again for their last one in 1886. Soon she was spoken of as the first female Impressionist. (There were others. You know about Cassatt. If you are interested in others, here are a few names: Marie Braquemond,  Eva Gonzales, Cecelia Beaux, Lilla Cabot Perry.)

Manet's La Repos, feat. Berthe

Berthe met Edouard Manet in 1868 and they quickly struck up a working relationship,  criticizing each other's work and giving advice which improved both of their paintings. Manet painted her portrait several times; she introduced him to outdoor painting, which improved his over-all painting. In 1872 a prominent dealer bought a number of her paintings and quickly sold most of them.  From that time on she sold her work regularly and made more money than many of her male Impressionist friends as well as her Salon competitors. She won over many of the critics who had judged her harshly. In addition to her own painting, she modeled for many other artists. She was a beautiful woman, tall and graceful with glossy dark hair and luminous eyes. But if you look carefully at the paintings, you will see that she often was not smiling and that there was a sadness or frustration in her demeanor. She once wrote that no man had ever treated her as an equal and that distinction was all she wanted from them.  She was her own most severe critic,  seldom satisfied with her work.

Eugene Manet and His Daughter, by Morisot

In 1874 she married Manet's younger brother Eugene, a writer and painter. He gave up those pursuits to manage her affairs and give her more time to paint. In 1877 they welcomed their only child, Julie. After becoming a mother, Berthe painted numerous pictures of children, her own and her nieces and nephews.  The paintings seemed to give her great pleasure and she was not as critical about them as she was about her other work.  Most of her paintings and prints were small. She experimented with watercolors, charcoal, colored pencils, pastels, even a bit of engraving. She had studied sculpture, but none of hers survived.  She was most successful when she did her central motifs in chalk or pencil, overlaid with watercolors, surrounded by bright backgrounds done in oils.

Sketch of Julie by Morisot

Edouard Manet died suddenly in 1883.  Eugene's health began to fail.  Berthe had her first solo exhibition in 1892, but her world was to come to a shocking halt in that same year when Eugene died suddenly.  It was difficult for Berthe to continue working at her usual pace after she became a widow and single mother. In 1895 Julie became very ill with influenza during an epidemic.  Berthe managed to nurse her back to health, but contracted the disease herself and quickly became ill with pneumonia, dying a few days later and leaving her daughter an orphan at 16.

So, there we have the stories of the lives of two influential female artists whose life journeys were very similar in some ways and very different in others, but intersected in the brief height of the Impressionist movement in France. They must have been acquainted; they certainly each were aware of the other’s work. Were they friends? Were they rivals? The answer is somewhat complicated.

Berthe Morisot, Le Berceau

Some writers have reported that Berthe was put off in her first introduction to Mary, whether because of her brusque American manner, her uncompromising suffragist attitudes, or her uncultured and clumsy French. (Or, most probably, some combination of those.) And they were each drawn to different factions among the male Impressionists — who were never as united as art historians would have you believe. But things changed as both women matured and moved on from the fading Impressionist movement. While never ‘BFF’s’, they developed an easy, cordial relationship, even studying together briefly in the last year before Berthe’s untimely death.

Mary Cassat, Summertime

After both had passed away, their reputations looked to diverge even more strangely than their lives: Mary, the ex-patriot American who staunchly refused to be labeled as anything except an independent woman and professional artist became the icon of women in the French Impressionist school. Berthe, first of the female Impressionists, and critically and commercially more successful than the majority of her male colleagues, seemed fated to become just a footnote in the history of Impressionism anywhere outside her native France.

Except for ….

Sketch of Julie by Renoir

Julie Manet, Berthe’s only child, orphaned at 16 did not lack for resources. Between her family connections and the good will Berthe inspired among her colleagues, it seemed as though the entire arts community of belle epoque France was determined to ride to her rescue. The famous poet Mallarmé became her guardian, and she went to live, comfortably, among her many cousins. She never lacked financial or emotional support.

Renoir, portrait of Julie Manet

Julie herself seemed determined to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Like Berthe, she modeled for artists of a number of schools — most notably Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Like Berthe, she became an artist in her own right. And like her mother, she married into yet another well-known family of artists, becoming the bride of Ernest Rouart, second son of the Impressionist Henri Rouart. Furthermore, like Berthe, she tended to accumulate art: works she inherited, gifts from admirers, her own and her husband’s unsold pieces, and purchases from friends and needy colleagues.

Portrait of Julie Manet, Painting - Ernest Rouart

Unlike her mother, however, Julie Manet Rouart managed to raise three children. And, most unlike Berthe, she survived not only the “Beautiful Era” of 19th century France but also two World Wars and nearly two-thirds of the 20th century! She eventually passed away at a fine old age of 88, in Paris in 1966.  Her son, Julien, endowed the Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris with much of her remaining art collection.

But it was as a writer, like both her father and her guardian, that Julie achieved her greatest fame. In 1987, twenty years after her death, her estate released the diaries she kept from age 10 until her marriage to Ernest for editing and publication as Growing Up with the Impressionists, which included not only her childhood remembrances of her parents and their friends, but also candid accounts of dinner-table conversations between various artists both before and after her parents’ deaths. It has remained in print in various editions and translations up to the present day — and is at least partly responsible for a re-examination of Berthe’s work and her eventual recognition as one of the finest female Impressionist artists.

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