This autumn, and for the first time in Spain, the Museo Thyssen‐Bornemisza is presenting a retrospective of the work of the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot. As the result of an important loan agreement, the exhibition will include more than thirty works from the collection of the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, shown alongside others from the Thyssen collections. The result will be to reveal Morisot’s luminous and elegant approach to painting, expressed in the form of landscapes, scenes of daily life and intimate female portraits.

This autumn, and for the first time in Spain, the Museo Thyssen‐Bornemisza is presenting a retrospective of the work of the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot. As the result of an important loan agreement, the exhibition will include more than thirty works from the collection of the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, shown alongside others from the Thyssen collections. The result will be to reveal Morisot’s luminous and elegant approach to painting, expressed in the form of landscapes, scenes of daily life and intimate female portraits.

Berthe Morisot. At the Ball, 1875.
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Married to Eugène Manet, brother of the painter Édouard, Berthe Morisot (Bourges, 1841–Paris, 1895) was the first female painter to join the Impressionists, who constituted the most avant‐garde art group of the day. Morisot participated in the now legendary First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874 and in other subsequent ones held by the group. Berthe Morisot is exceptional within the history of 19th‐century art history in her position as a woman from upper middle‐class French society who forged an important career as an artist and who was associated with an innovative movement that provoked aversion at the time.

Berthe Morisot. The Dressing Mirror, 1876
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid 

The Dressing Mirror in the Permanent Collection of the Museo Thyssen is one of the works that Morisot exhibited at the Third Impressionist Exhibition of 1877 and is the one chosen to mark the start of the present exhibition. Delicately painted with soft brushstrokes, it depicts a young woman dressing herself in a leisurely manner before an Empire style cheval glass. Morisot was particularly interested in effects of luminosity and colour and shared her fellow Impressionists’ concern for reflections of light. Her independent, somewhat rebellious nature is evident in her work, which also provides the basis in this exhibition for an examination of the role of women in late 19th‐century France. This is because Morisot was not just a great creative figure but also an upper middle‐class, urban woman who was interested in fashion and in the flourishing cultural life of the day and who associated with intellectuals and artists such as Manet, Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Degas and Mallarmé. So all‐pervading was the depiction of female sentiments and emotions in Morisot’s work that her friend the poet Paul Valéry used to say that she “lived her painting” and “painted her life”. 

Berthe Morisot. Hollyhocks, 1884
Oil on canvas. 65 x 54 cm.
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Berthe Morisot was introduced to art and music at an early age. The official artistic education offered by the École des Beaux‐Arts was not open to women at that date but her interest and ability led both her and her sister Edma to pursue an artistic training with teachers who gave private classes to amateur female painters. Among them was Joseph‐Benoît Guichard who encouraged the sisters to enter the Musée du Louvre as copyists, an habitual occupation of young painters at this period. In 1858 they encountered the work of Henri Fantin‐Latour and Félix Bracquemond, which may have encouraged the suggestion on the part of their new teacher, Achille Oudinot, that they start to paint outdoors.

Through Oudinot the two sisters met Camille Corot who had a decisive influence on their work, while it was through Fantin‐Latour that they met Manet in 1868. Berthe Morisot would be an important model in some of his paintings, appearing in The Balcony (1868‐69), which was inspired by Goya’s Majas on a Balcony (ca.1808‐12). From that date onwards Morisot and Manet would enjoy a close artistic and personal relationship.

Berthe Morisot. Reclining Shepherdess, 1891
Oil on canvas, 63 x 114cm. Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

In 1869 Morisot’s sister Edma abandoned her artistic career following her marriage and left the family home. Berthe thus continued alone. Her subject matter, which had always favoured domestic settings, now focused even more closely on scenes of her sisters and their children. The birth of her own daughter Julie in 1874 provided her with another such motif.

The present exhibition opens with a group of photographs of Berthe Morisot with family members and friends. In the galleries that follow her paintings are shown alongside others by the artists who were of importance to her including Corot, Boudin, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Monet and Pissarro, offering a thematic route in which scenes of female life of the period share space with elegant female portraits and with urban, rural and marine views.

Berthe Morisot. The Impressionist Woman Painter
15 November 2011 to 12 February 2012

Museo Thyssen‐Bornemisza
Paseo del Prado 8, 28014 Madrid
Tuesdays to Sundays, 10am to 7pm. Saturdays in 2011, from 1