Dimensions
240 x 280 x 12mm
The French nineteenth-century painter Berthe Morisot was held by her contemporaries to be the "quintessential Impressionist". She was an influential member of the Impressionist group, whose exhibitions she organised with her colleagues, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Degas.
Although a member of an upper middle-class family, Morisot refused to accept the prevailing idea in such circles that, for women, art was merely a suitable accomplishment. The authors examine how she was able to turn the limitations that her background, education and gender imposed on her as an artist to advantage: the need to be chaperoned, the restrictions of subject-matter thought appropriate for women, the implications of her identity as a woman for the way that her work was perceived by contemporary critics.
The book considers her work in the context of the artistic debates of the time, particularly arguments about the degree of finish required for a painting and the appropriateness of modern life subject-matter. It also discusses the extent to which Morisot participated in these, her involvement in the independent group exhibitions, and the meaning that Baudelaire's famous dictum to paint "the heroism of modern life" had for a woman artist painting in the changing city of Paris - a very different city from the Paris of her male colleagues.
Includes colour illustrations and black and white illustrations.
