Berthe Morisot, Young Woman at a Mirror, 1880. Art Institute of Chicago.
Impressionist Berthe Morisot is known for her light-filled canvases of modern life: afternoons boating on a lake, young women in ballgowns, children playing. Yet her contemporaries perceived a connection with the previous century. Augusts Renoir considered her ‘the last elegant and ‘feminine’ artist that we have had since Fragonard.’ And the art critic Paul Girard, surveying the 1896 retrospective of her work in Paris, declared, ‘it is the 18th century modernised.’
Following the French Revolution, 18th-century art fell from favour, but was ‘rediscovered’ in the mid-19th century by collectors including Louis La Caze and Hippolyte Walferdin. Morisot copied works by Boucher in the Musée du Louvre and elsewhere; experimenting with red chalk, a technique closely associated with Rococo drawings. She also greatly admired the English painters Gainsborough, Reynolds and Romney, whose work she first encountered on honeymoon in the Isle of Wight and London in 1875.
This lecture by exhibition curator Dr Lois Oliver compliments the current exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will also travel to the Musée Marmottan Monet. It traces Morisot’s engagement with eighteenth-century culture, and highlights what set her apart from her predecessors and contemporaries.
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This is an online event hosted on Zoom which can be watched live, or on-demand for three weeks afterwards. You will receive your link to access the event in your email confirmation and the on-demand link after the event ends.