Refined elegance: Berthe Morisot
The recent Morisot exhibition at Dulwich emphasised the influence of 18th-century French painters — Chardin, Boucher, Fragonard and Watteau — on her art. But in the catalogue — Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism Ed. Marianne Mathieu and 3 others (Paris: Musée Marmottan Monet and Dulwich Picture Gallery, £25) — its French feminist authors undermine their own thesis and exaggerate Morisot’s achievement. They claim that she “stands shoulder to shoulder with her fellow ‘founders’ of Impressionism: Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir” and celebrate Morisot “as a leading light in the history of art.” This is propaganda, not scholarship. Morisot, though an accomplished and delightful artist, is not equal to the genius of Monet and Degas.
Joseph Conrad famously wrote, “My task is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything.” But in a cloud of unknowing and premeditated blindness, these authors see only what they want to see, not what is actually in front of their eyes. They try to show similarities between pictures in the catalogue, but all their comparisons reveal the obvious differences. The visual evidence constantly contradicts their argument.
Their first massive example, Lagrenée’s The Abduction of Déjanire (1755), portrays Hercules rescuing his wife from the centaur Nessus. The mythical subject, executed with sharply defined draftsmanship, has a half-naked woman and three nude muscular men, a rearing horse and swirling sea, violent action and dramatic gestures. By contrast, Morisot paints gentle domestic scenes of women and children, emphasises the spontaneous sketch — often in plein air — rather than the finished composition, has a vivid palette and visible brush strokes, and creates colour contrasts, strong light and a cloudy ambience. By trying to detach Morisot from the Impressionists who inspired her, they diminish her achievement and make her seem derivative rather than original.
Louis Jean Lagrenee – The Abduction of Deianeira by the Centaur Nessus
The argument for the influence of 18th-century English painters is also far-fetched. The authors reproduce Morisot’s Julie Daydreaming, showing her pensive young daughter in a conventional pose, facing the viewer with her hand on her cheek. They claim that it shows the influence of George Romney’s sensual and sophisticated Emma Hamilton, but the style, dress, model and mood of the two pictures are all quite different.
The authors also state that reproductions in magazines of Thomas Gainsborough’s popular Blue Boy “could perhaps have piqued Morisot’s interest in English art.” Perhaps. But the elaborate dark satin costume of the standing rosy-cheeked boy, with white stockings, beribboned shoes and ostrich-feather hat has—to use Orwell’s mock-cockney expression—“nudding whatefer to do wif”— Morisot’s young Lucie Léon at the Piano.
Thomas Gainsborough – The Blue Boy
A third example, as the authors strive to find a likeness, is the most absurd. Goya’s great Clothed Maja is a sexy young woman with fringed hair, curved eyebrows and rosy cheeks. Wrapped in lace and tightly bound with a pink sash, she’s bosomy and voluptuous. Her hips are wide, her feet apart, her crotch at the very center of the painting is noticeably indented. Morisot’s much older Madame Marie Hubbard also lies on a cushioned couch, but that’s the only resemblance. The product of a cosmetic mortician, she is sick-looking and can barely hold her fan. Her body is covered in a billowing white muslin dress and her feet are modestly crossed.
Francisco Goya – The Clothed Maja
One author mentions Goya’s The Meadow of San Isidro (1788) without noting the real influence on Morisot. Max Seidel writes of Goya: “It was the custom on May 15 for all Madrid to gather along the banks of the Manzanares for a rendezvous in the open air to honor the city’s patron saint. The widened perspective shows a meadow occupied by groups of picnickers [with parasols]. A bridge leads to the city, to [the spires of] the royal palace and the impressive dome of the Church of San Francisco el Grande. In the middle lie the low meadows along the river; here, long rows of festive people walk, drive their coaches, and encamp in front of tents.” Morisot’s View of Paris from the Trocadéro (1872) — named for an 1823 French victory in Spain — has the same wide perspective, looking down from a distance at the city. Fashionably dressed women with parasols stand in the foreground. A broad expanse in the middle has a coach, horsemen and strollers. A bridge spans the Seine, and a cluster of trees stands on the far shore. There’s a space between the trees and town, which, beneath a cloudy sky, reveals a golden dome on the right and spires on the left.
Francisco Goya – The Meadow of San Isidro
The first chapter in this catalogue, which lists 24 names and dates in only two opening paragraphs, reads more like an index than an essay. Vitiated by pure speculation — “has something of,” “may have seen,” “must have seen,” “hard not to see” — this chapter is the worst of all. The author contradicts her own argument and the dominant theme of French influence by admitting that Chardin scholars “do not make any particular connection to Morisot’s work . . . [and she] did not follow in the footsteps of Chardin’s imitators. . . . Despite what the commentators said, the fashion for the eighteenth century does not seem to have defined Berthe Morisot. . . . The rediscovery of eighteenth-century art did not mark her career. . . . Morisot persisted with her own aim: to learn to paint figures in the open air.”
The author concedes that, unlike Morisot, Boucher has “the qualities and defects of the pompous eighteenth-century school, all exaggerated with talent and excelled particularly in decoration.” Once again, Fragonard’s conventional subject of an elaborately costumed music teacher leering at his young female pupil in a dark room is poles apart from Morisot’s bright, lightly sketched pastel of a little girl watching another girl playing the piano. The author, in an awkward translation, concludes that “this painting, which Morisot never exhibited during her lifetime and whose debt to Fragonard, which here has nothing to do with technique, was therefore unknown.”
Though Fragonard’s “name was on everyone’s lips,” Morisot never mentioned her supposed family connection to that painter. The genealogical chapter on Fragonard and Morisot is deadly dull, but carefully examines the evidence. It concludes, despite the myth started by Jacques-Emile Blanche in 1892, that her family was not related to Fragonard. This torpedoes this particular supposed French Connection.
Two of the paintings in this exhibition are worth noting. Morisot painted her Self Portrait in 1885 when she was 44 years old. Intense and alert, she has a voluptuous figure, wild grey-streaked black hair falling over her dark shadowy eyes, a handsome nose and sensual lips. She wears a black scarf and tan floral-patterned dress, holds a brush and palette, and has a self-assured demeanour that challenges the viewer to give her the recognition she deserves.
Berthe Morisot – Self-Portrait
Julie and Her Greyhound Laertes (1893) portrays Morisot’s fifteen-year-old daughter — round-faced, rosy-cheeked and full-breasted — in a long blue dress with a black shoe pointing out beneath it. She faces the viewer and rests one hand on the pink sofa, the other on the throat of the dog standing at her feet. The sinuous shape and tail curving between the legs of the sleek, sharp-nosed Laertes (named for the father of Odysseus) echo Julie’s wasp-waisted figure and streaming chestnut hair. Berthe’s maternal tenderness and adoration of Julie shine through this painting.
Berthe Morisot – Julie and Her Greyhound Laertes
The pointless 2-page duplication of Watteau’s Les Plaisers du Bal and the reproduction of Morisot’s handwritten letters, quoted in the text, take up 10 more superfluous pages, in addition to the 12 blank pages that should have been used to analyse her art, and to provide a chronology and index. It would have been infinitely more interesting and revealing to quote her last letter, written the day before she died — a rare instance of a parent mourning the child’s loss of herself and one of the most poignant letters ever written: “My little Julie, I love you as I die; I shall still love you even when I am dead; I beg you not to cry, this parting was inevitable. I hoped to live until you were married. Work and be good as you have always been; you have not caused me one sorrow in your little life. You have beauty, wealth; make good use of them. Do not cry; I love you more than I can tell you.”
Jeffrey Meyers, FRSL, has published five books on art: Painting and the Novel, The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis, Impressionist Quartet, Modigliani: A Life and Alex Colville: The Mystery of the Real.
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