Woman at the Ball

by Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)

Woman at the Ball, by Berthe Morisot (1875)

In 1874 The art critic Albert Wolff wrote that the impressionists consisted of “five or six lunatics of which one is a woman...[whose] feminine grace is maintained amid the outpourings of a delirious mind."

This “lunatic-woman” was Berthe Morisot. In 1874 it was considered scandalous to be an impressionist, let alone a female one. And yet Berthe Morisot was not the kind of woman to care about the opinions of others. As a young artist she had joined the impressionists in the infmaous ‘rejected art’ exhibit, choosing to forego the salon to create a countermovement with Manet, Degas, and Monet. These were her peers, not her idols.

And yet even when her work became more succesful, it remained trivialized as “essentially feminine”. Only recently have her works come to be seen in a different light, as she continues to be rediscovered as not just one of the great observers of the female experience, but one of the greatest impressionists.

Married to Eugene Manet (the older Manet’s younger brother), she frequently painted women in domestic environments, tending to children or housework. She depicted women in a realistic, unaffected manner. Her works are full of unadorned femininity, illustrating the reality of women’s lives in the late nineteenth century, including the boredom, the familial labour, and the oft-denied interiority of women’s lived experiences.

Eduoard Manet portrait of Berthe Morisot

Towards the end of her life, she reflected on the plight of being a female artist in a man’s world. She wrote:

“I don't think there has ever been a man who treated a woman as an equal and that's all I would have asked for, for I know I'm worth as much as they."

Berthe Morisot passed away at age 54, after contracting pneumonia from her young daughter.

I have included a selection of her works below.

And finally, another Manet portrait (they were friends).

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Thank you,

Julian