The Mother and Sister of the Artist
7:00 AM |
| Berthe Morisot. The Mother and Sister of the Artist. 1869-70. |
The Morisot sisters, Edma and Berthe, had the same dream of being an artist. Only they ended up with Berthe as the painter and Edma as the painted. Born in a middle-class bourgeois family in Bourges, France, the sisters had their parents’ support to pursue this rather peculiar profession for women. The two artists enjoyed a close relationship until Edma chose marriage and motherhood over an artistic career. In The Mother and Sister of the Artist, Morisot paints her sister as sad, submissive, and completely blocked by her mother. In the late 19th century, the avant-garde Impressionists gained little appreciation from the public or the critics. This criticism was especially harsh on women painters, one art critic dismissed the Impressionists as "five or six lunatics, including one woman."
Morisot depicted mostly domestic mother-and-child scenes, partly because she wished to show women in their everyday life, also because, as a young bourgeoise, she outright could not be seen at the popular cafes and bars that the males painted. The situation for Morisot and fellow women painters such as Mary Cassatt is clearly shown in Morisot’s relationship with Edouard Manet. Manet painted Morisot more than twelve times but Manet never posed for her. Morisot, anxious about sending Mother and Sister to the Salon, solicited Manet's advice. Rather than offering verbal suggestions, Manet extensively repainted the whole canvas. Manet's suave shorthand, seen in the mother's features and black dress, differs visibly from Morisot’s light touch in her sister's features. “My only hope is that I shall be rejected,” Morisot wrote to her sister in agony. The painting was accepted.
Painted during 1969-70, four or five years before the First Impressionist Exhibition, this painting already shows the main features of Impressionism. Unfinished, casual strokes and open contours highlight the artistic qualities that Morisot and her close circle practice. The contrast between Edma’s pearl-colored dress and her mother’s black dress enhances a sense of entrapment, both for Edma and for Berthe. The chair leg is an interesting choice, too, in its simple, almost abstract form.
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