Questioning Morisot’s Modernity
Berthe Morisot, Rêveuse, 1877, pastel sur toile, 50.17 x 60.96 cm, Kansas city, Nelson Atkins museum of Art. Source : https://nelson-atkins.org/

How did Berthe Morisot resolve the apparent paradox of pursuing a career as a professional artist while following the path expected of her as a bourgeois woman?

Claude Monet, Intérieur d'appartement, 1875, huile sur toile, 81,5 x 60 cm, Paris, musée d'Orsay, legs Gustave Caillebotte. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Martine Beck-Coppola.
The Third Impressionist Exhibition
In April 1877 the first self-titled “impressionist” exhibition, organized by a group of modern painters, opened in a rented apartment at 6 rue le Peletier. While it was their third exhibition as a group, this was a new venture into exhibition construction for the artists, who having previously worked in commercial gallery spaces, were hanging their paintings in a domestic setting. At the center of a Paris modernized by Georges-Eugène Haussmann, visitors climbed to the second floor of the apartment building where they moved through five large rooms, each containing a curated selection of works by various artists. Upon entering the third room they saw one painting each by Camille Pissarro and Pierre-August Renoir and one wall each devoted to Berthe Morisot and Paul Cezanne.
A central work by Morisot (1841-1895) was Psyche. In this intimately sized painting (65x54cm), we see a young woman in a white shift, her sleeve slipping off one shoulder while she glances over the other to view herself in a floor length mirror. The reflection of her face, seen in profile to the viewer, is blurred into anonymity. Fabric seems to encase the entire scene, from the carpet and drapes to the plush couch and the material of her clothes, leaving only the reflective surface of the mirror and skin bared. Clearly depicting a moment of privacy, the scene evokes a sense of luxury available only to a select few; this is a representation of the bourgeoisie domestic interior. While other artists contributed scenes of the interior, such as Claude Monet’s almost unsettlingly blue Interieur d’appartement or the characteristically voyeuristic bathing scenes by Edgar Degas, Morisot represents most of the domestic scenes. Indeed, Psyche, for all of its attention at the exhibition, has become one of Morisot’s most celebrated works.
As with their two previous exhibitions the ‘impressionists’ received much critical attention both in support of and rallying against their new style and subject matter. Contemporary art historian and critic Paul Mantz wrote that “the truth is that there is a single impressionist in the group on rue Le Peletier: it is Berthe Morisot… [her painting] has all the freshness of improvisation. Here is where we really find the impression perceived by a sincere eye, faithfully rendered by a hand that does not lie[1]”. His praise, like most supporters, focuses on her fidelity to perception. Meanwhile even those rejecting impressionism could not deny they saw talent in Morisot’s work. Critic Roger Ballu suggests it’s “too bad that Berthe Morisot has strayed among the impressionists! Her initial studies miss, the drawing is off, but among these works, the tact and feeling for color cannot be denied[2]”. Whether or not the reviews of Morisot’s contributions were positive, it is clear her works were viewed separately and interpreted differently from those of other impressionists in the exhibition.
“ La vérité, c'est qu'il n'y a qu'un impressionniste dans le groupe de la rue Le Peletier: c'est Mlle Berthe Morisot. … [Sa peinture] a toute la franchise de l'improvisation. C'est vraiment là l'impression éprouvée par un œil sincère et loyalment rendue par une main qui ne triche pas. ”

Edgar Degas, Femme sortant du bain, 1876-1877, pastel sur monotype, 16 x 21,5 cm, Paris, musée d'Orsay, Legs Gustave Caillebotte. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

Berthe Morisot, La Psyché, 1876, huile sur toile, 65 x 54 cm. © Madrid, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza
The Modern Painter – Critical Writings
The impressionists were the first organized group of ‘modern’ painters. In both subject and style, they embodied developing modernity in Paris. The same modern circumstances that these artists responded to solidified divisions in society, including the enforcement of gendered spheres of embodiment for men and women. Their modern art is generally conceived as work made in response to increasing urbanization, industrialization, and professionalization in the mid-nineteenth century. Rejecting the structure and control of institutions such as the Academy and Salon, artists moved away from history and narrative painting toward subjects of contemporary life.
Charles Baudelaire “Painter of Modern Life”
In 1863, eleven years before the first exhibition, the French author and critic, Charles Baudelaire, published his essay The Painter of Modern Life, in which he describes a new ideal artist. This man focuses on depictions of urban bourgeois life, identifying the modern with these spaces. He is anonymous yet comfortable in the crowd. Importantly, Baudelaire makes mention of the ‘home’ of the modern artist: “to be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home[3]”. To be a modern painter was to be out in the world. This is in direct opposition to the position of women, whose access to public space was codified and highly limited. Male artists answered Baudelaire’s call with impressionists focusing or urban scenes of modernity or rejecting modernity by focusing on the landscape. These places and spaces of modern painting, as Baudelaire first conceived of it, focus attention outside of the domestic, and outside the reach of female artists.
Louis Edmond Duranty “New Painting”
In conjunction with the second exhibition in 1876 the critic and public intellectual Edmond Duranty published a defence of “the Group of Artists Exhibiting at the Durand-Ruel Galleries.” In his 37 page pamphlet, Duranty argues the validity of subjects from modern life and the new stylistic attitudes they necessitate. He claims that the original idea of impressionism “was to eliminate the partition separating the artist’s studio from everyday life, and to introduce the reality of the street[4]”. While his essay does not explicitly mention Morisot, it does make mention of the importance of the interior in the depiction of everyday life writing, “our lives take place in rooms and on streets, and rooms and streets have their own special laws of light and visual language[5]”. In some ways this text worked to legitimize Morisot and her work, yet most critical reviews did not see her work as having the same important subject matter as her male counterparts. These definitions of modern painting have endured, with current museum scholarship still relying on a narrative of urban embrace or rejection[6].

Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot au bouquet de violettes, 1872, huile sur toile, 55,5 x 40,5 cm, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
Modern Woman
From the same burgeoning urban developments and social shifts of the nineteenth-century that produced the Flâneur, emerged the modern woman. The increasing stratification of society solidified differentiations in class and gender. One main product of these clear social divisions was the establishment of separate spheres for men and women. Bourgeois women of leisure were seen in opposition to the bourgeois gentleman[7]. Women were seen as pillars of morality and the epitome of beauty and grace. As mothers, they were to instill these qualities in the next generation. Women were responsible for the domestic home while their husband acted in the public realm of urban modernity. These spaces represent the divided spheres of modernity: men in public and women in private. This highly prescriptive definition of the modern woman served to limit what she could and could not do.
Throughout her life Morisot pursued the path that was expected of her as a Bourgeois woman while concurrently furthering her career as a professional artist. Her childhood education was to prepare her to be the good woman and wife that befit her social position. She married a man of appropriate status and ran a respectable home within all the expectations of her class. She was a dutiful mother to her daughter Julie Manet (1878-1966). Yet at the same time, she was a professional artist, and a highly productive one (with over 800 documented works). She publicly displayed her work (whether for purchase or not) in exhibitions with other mostly male professional artists and contributed to the artist community by participating in salons and organizing exhibitions. Morisot was very much a professional member of the impressionists. However, modern women were not supposed to have professions. With her feet so clearly in two worlds, was she ever really a part of either?
When her work was acknowledged by critics and the public, it was often presented in a negative way. In response to her showing at the third exhibition, critic George Riviere described her work as “charming pictures, so refined and above all so feminine[8]”. This description of her work was part of a larger narrative of feminizing impressionism. Conservative critics worked to de-legitimize impressionism by associating its qualities with that of women. The first to make this argument was Teodor de Wyzewa writing that, “Only a woman has the right to rigorously practice the Impressionist system, she alone can limit her effort to the translation of impressions[9]”. When Morisot was considered part of the impressionist group it was often to further a narrative of exclusion. She was used to demonstrate the lack of rigour and professionalism in the movement. Whether used to distance impressionism from historic art movements or from twentieth-century modernisms that were establishing themselves against impressionism, this is a narrative still facing Morisot today.
Morisot as a modern painter and a modern woman presents a contradiction. Can she be both, or like critics said is she simply the embodiment of femininity in painting? Yes, she exhibited with other ‘modern’ painters, but there was always a level on which she was excluded from the others. This was in many ways a no win situation for Morisot. However, perhaps by reframing our understanding of what she did and why, it is possible to escape the trappings of nineteenth-century definitions of modernity and their inherent contradictions.

Catalogue de la 3e exposition de peinture par MM..., p.10, Paris, imp. E. Capiomont et V. Renault, 1877.
Modern Contradictions – the Cliché of Morisot
Morisot is not Baudelaire’s painter of Modern Life, nor was she ever able to be. To an extent, she was never going to epitomize Duranty’s ‘new painting’ either. The constraints of her life were very different. She could not go to the same places and paint the same subjects. A woman like her could not attend the same artist’s gatherings or cafes that her male colleagues could. Nor was she offered the same latitude to be eccentric or permission to depict scenes of social spaces. For example, consider works that hung alongside Morisot’s in the third exhibition. Of the works she submitted to the exhibition, eight out of the nine depicted women alone in a domestic setting. Hanging alongside them as the focus of the third room was Auguste Renoir’s Bal de moulin de la Galette. In the painting he depicts the vibrant and lively ambiance of the popular dance bar. Diffuse light casts through the trees above onto the crowd. It was the quintessential scene of modern life depicting a popular Parisian social activity of the Bourgeois. It was also a depiction of the modern life Renoir led.
Renoir’s Bal was undoubtedly the standout work at the third exhibition. Whether or not critics admired the work, almost every review mentioned it. Meanwhile, Morisot’s work was praised for its aesthetic yet continually viewed through the lens of her gender even by supportive critics. Philippe Burty claims that Morisot, “with her double privilege of being a woman and a truly gifted artist, is destined to win over both critics and the public[10]” While these artists were not exclusively producing scenes of urban Paris, it was certainly never presented to Morisot as suitable subjects. It is not as if Morisot never broke with tradition and expectations. Her very presence as a professional artist was contradictory to societal expectations. When it came to subject matter in her painting, she was more conservative.
Morisot was and continues to be identified as different from these new definitions of both the modern painter and modern painting in some very crucial ways. Most of her work depicts people and almost always women. These women are usually in private settings of the domestic home and garden. They are seen doing activities of bourgeois leisure in feminine spaces. While she depicts scenes of labour and leisure in the domestic interior, her male counterparts depict scenes of labour and leisure in the urban exterior. Seemingly similar, yet Morisot’s use of the domestic supported claims she was not a serious artist. Critic Marius Chaumelin wrote that “They were then given a generous name, ‘Impressionists,’ which no doubt brought pleasure to Mlle Berthe Morisot and to the other young lady painters who have embraced these doctrines[11]”. It also provided cause to identify her with female amateur artists (often taught to paint their own domestic interiors) instead of professional artists[12]. These interior spaces and their association with the feminine were understood as the antithesis to the artist and artist’s process which has a masculine association. This false association between women’s spaces and amateurism endures in the way we view Berthe Morisot’s career and artistic production.

Auguste Renoir, Bal du moulin de la Galette, 1876, huile sur toile, 131,5 x 176,5 cm, Paris, musée d'Orsay, legs Gustave Caillebotte. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Mathieu Rabeau

Berthe Morisot, Jeune femme se poudrant, 1877, huile sur toile, 46 x 39 cm, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
The Interior in a New Light
Morisot’s seemingly conservative subject matter of scenes appropriate for female amateurs actually serve to subvert the expectations placed on her. The same circumstances that precipitated changing definitions of gender roles and artists, also gave rise to the new interior. A distinct product of modernity, the bourgeois interior was conceived in response to urbanizing Paris. In many ways developments inside were a direct product of developments outside. This speaks to the psychological role of the interior as an escape from urbanism. Recent scholarship claims that by mid-century “the interior came to serve as a respite and repository for the display of bourgeois values held by both men and women[13]”. The conception of these spaces in binary terms: inside/outside, domestic/public lent itself to their codification in gendered terms; the domestic as feminine and the public as masculine. This is part of a larger process of codification and division of ‘spheres’ in the nineteenth-century. Even within the domestic space individual rooms were divided: men the library and study: women the boudoir and drawing room.
Beyond the connection of women to the interior in both a literal and symbolic sense. Morisot depicted subjects she was familiar with. She painted scenes of her life and subjects she had access to. Through that personal and professional relationship, the modern interior mediated many aspects of Morisot’s modernity. The modern interior as a product of urbanization and public modernity becomes its own private modernity. If their definitions are predicated on the existence of the other then they can be considered equally relevant to the project of modernity. Domesticity is an integral reaction to urban modernity and an important space in which modern life is enacted. Morisot then is a painter of modern life despite not fulfilling the title in the way Baudelaire intended.

Berthe Morisot, Femme à sa toilette, huile sur toile, 1870–1880, 60.3 × 80.4 cm, Chicago, Art
New Perspectives on Morisot
As new styles of modern art sought legitimacy throughout the twentieth century there was a revision of impressionism as grandfather of modernism. The twentieth-century rejection of the domestic as sufficiently modern meant the interior scenes of impressionism were pushed aside in favour of ‘more modern’ subject matter[14]. In fact, in the nineteenth-century, the depiction of domestic spaces was considered a highly modern subject. It is perhaps here that we find the solution to Morisot’s questionable modernity. In her paintings, the modern interior acts as mediator of her role as painter and woman. As a subject matter and framing device, the interior works to resolve issues or contradictions in her identity and place in a newly defined modern world. Another reading of period reviews shows there were instances of critics reading Morisot’s work as a representation of modern Paris. Jacques writes, “so four impressionists gave themselves the mission of reproducing Paris. Mr. Caillebotte chose the street; Mr. Renoir, the ball; Mr. Degas, the theatre and the café concert; Ms. Berthe Morisot, the boudoir[15]”.
This small but significant reference was lost in the narratives about Morisot that dominated the discussion of defining Impressionism. It also illustrates the commonplace inclusion of the interior in discussions of modern life.
As visitors walked to the stairs at 6 rue le Peletier and into the second floor apartment for the exhibition they saw such a variety of styles and subjects. What was consistent was the paintings’ reflection of their own modernity. In this apartment they viewed the paintings in both the space of modernity that inspired them and that they would eventually be displayed, once purchased. To view Morisot’s contributions in this way is to accept a multi-faceted idea of modernism that continues to evolve. Berthe Morisot was a modern painter and a modern woman: not despite the contradictions but because of them. To consider Berthe Morisot as separate from her male peers on the basis of sex and simple subject matter is to perpetuate a cliché about women impressionists. While their work may skew towards scenes of women and domestic interiors, this is no less a worthy subject for the painter of modern life. These subjects and spaces were as much a project of modern Paris as the ‘bar’. Understanding Morisot’s work in this way counters historic narratives and presents the opportunity to evaluate her work for its contributions rather than debate her inclusion.
[1] Paul Mantz, “L’exposition des peintres impressionnistes”, Le Temps, April 22, 1877, p. 3. gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k226882h/f3.item.zoom
[2] Roger Ballu, La Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosit2, 14 April 1877, reprinted in Charles S. Moffett, The New Painting: Impressionism 1874-1886, 1986, p. 229.
[3] Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, ed. Jonathan Mayne, Phaidon Publishers Inc., 1964.
[4] Louis Émile Edmond Duranty, “The New Painting” in Charles S. Moffett (ed.), The New Painting: Impressionism 1874-1886, 1986, p. 44.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Many exhibitions in the last five years have addressed modernity from the perspective of exclusively the urban. Examples include, Katie Hanson, Julia Welch, Ted Gott, Miranda Wallace (eds), French Impressionism: From the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 2021 and Ortrud Westheider. Impressionism: The Hasso Plattner Collection, Munich, Prestel and Museum Barberini, 2020.
[7] For more information see James F. McMillan, France and Women, 1789-1914: Gender, Society and Politics, London, Routledge, 2000 ; Janet Wolff and John Seed, The Culture of Capital: Art, Power and the Nineteenth-Century Middle Class, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988 ; Christopher Reed, Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, London, Thames and Hudson, 1996.
[8] George Rivière, “L’Exposition des impressionnistes,” L’Impressionniste, no.1, 6 April 1877. gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9614703f/f3.image
[9] Theodor de Wyzewa, “Berthe Morisot”, Peintres de jadis et d’aujourd’hui, Paris, 1891, p.216. gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6578262m/f260.item.r=systeme
[10] Philippe Burty “Exposition des impressionnistes”, La République française, April 25, 1877, reprinted in Ruth Berson, The New Painting: Impressionsim 1874-1886 – Documentation, Vol. 1, 1996, p. 124.
[11] Marius Chaumelin, “Actualités: L’exposition des intransigeants”, La Gazette des Étrangers, 8 April 1876 reprinted in Ruth Berson, The New Painting: Impressionsim 1874-1886 – Documentation, Vol. 1, 1996, p. 67.
[12] Anne Higonnet, “Feminine Visual Culture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Berthe Morisot’s Images of Women, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1992. (84-122).
[13] Temma Balducci, Heather Belnap Jensen, and Pamela J. Warner, Interior Portraiture and Masculine Identity in France, 1789-1914. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011 2.
[14] See Francesca Berry, “Lived Perspectives: the art of the French nineteenth-century interior”, in Jeremy Aynsley and Charlotte Grant, Imagined Interiors: Representing the Domestic Interior since the Renaissance, London-New York, V & A Pub. 2006.
[15] Jacques [pseud.] “Menus Propos: Exposition Impressionniste”, L’Homme libre, 12 avril 1877. https://www.retronews.fr/journal/lhomme-libre/12-apr-1877/4064/5388168/1
Hailey Chomos, « Questioning Morisot’s Modernity », Impressionnisme.s [en ligne], mis en ligne le 22 Jan 2025 , consulté le 10 Feb 2025. URL: https://impressionnismes.fr/debat/questioning-morisots-modernity/