In the 1890s she is already a grand-dom, you might say of impressions. She's moving in the most kind of refined circles of the Parisian avant-garde and they adore her. I think what's really unfortunate with the criticism from the 20th century, it's not only women that have been misrepresented. We don't think about them having caring roles or being emotionally upset by something as trivial as a child getting sick. And so I think we need to review how we look at impressionist art more broadly, and all artists really.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the influential painters at the heart of the French Impressionist movement: Berthe Morisot (1841-1895). The men in her circle could freely paint in busy bars and public spaces, while Morisot captured the domestic world and found new, daring ways to paint quickly in the open air. Her work shows women as they were, to her: informal, unguarded, and not transformed or distorted for the eyes of men. The image above is one of her few self-portraits, though several portraits of her survive by other artists, chiefly her sister Edma and her brother-in-law Edouard Manet.
With
Tamar Garb
Professor of History of Art at University College London
Lois Oliver
Curator at the Royal Academy and Adjunct Professor of Art History at the American University of Notre Dame London.
And
Claire Moran
Reader in French at Queen's University Belfast
Producer: Simon Tillotson