Berthe Morisot's paintings of her daughter, Julie Manet

       Images of fashionable bourgeois women were Berthe Morisot’s métier. She relied on her sister Edma and her friends to sit for many such paintings. But when her daughter, Julie, was born on November 14, 1878, she became her mother’s favorite model. Here are representative paintings from each of five stages of Julie’s life. The accompanying quotes are from my historical novel, La Luministe.

1. Here’s my description of Julie’s first appearance, with Angèle, Berthe’s seconde mere:

                                 The Wetnurse, 1879

"As soon as I felt myself again, I began to make paintings of my baby, relying on watercolors in order to work faster. The first fine day of spring, I set up Julie and Angèle in the back garden. As always, I wanted to show my subjects surrounded by space and light. Angèle was a cloud of white in a whirling sea of green. Only her umbrella thrown to one side and her straw hat on the other anchored her to the earth. Perspective and modeling seemed beside the point."

2.  When Julie reached toddlerhood, Berthe used hastily scribbled pastels rather than oils to capture her daughter. One such work, The Veranda, depicts only a discarded     tea set and an empty chair; Julie had already made her escape.

"From then on, Julie was my primary model. When she grew to be a toddler, I showed her holding her doll, or floating her toy boat in the lake in the Bois. She became an angelic, round-faced child, if a sometimes impatient model."

                    Girl with Doll (Julie Manet), 1882

3.  A series of paintings of Julie and her father, Eugene Manet, is especially affecting when you remember that Eugene often cared for Julie so that Berthe could paint. Of course, when Berthe painted her family, in her own way she was a part of the family portrait.

"I tried to capture the kind of father Eugène was to his daughter in the painting I made one summer of the two of them in the garden at le Mesnil. Eugène, in his summer hat, was reading to little Julie as she sat watching her red toy boat drift around a small pond. The boat—the center of the composition—was for my enjoyment, reminding me of the boats of Lorient, Cherbourg, the Isle of Wight, Nice. My little family was the calm in a whirling composition, cocooned in a circle of green and yellow leaves dappled with white light."

     Eugene and Julie in Bougival

4. Berthe and Julie were inseparable. Berthe taught her daughter the alphabet, using a book she illustrated. They often drew or painted side by side.

The Drawing Lesson

5.  After Eugene Manet’s death, Berthe created a series of portraits of Julie grieving for her father. These works coincided with Berthe’s return to Renaissance painting techniques—rich hues and long brushstrokes that were perfect for portraying the willowy young woman that 16-year-old Julie had become.

"Laërtes sat with me during hours of mourning, silent except for an occasional shivering sigh."

                                           Julie Manet and her Greyhound, Laertes, 1893

The Artist's Sister at a Window, by Berthe Morisot

Intimate Impressionism, an exhibition showing at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco through August 14, 2014, features works on tour while their permanent home in the National Gallery undergoes renovation. The collection includes 12 important oil paintings by Berthe Morisot. Only one is included in Intimate Impressionism, and it’s also the only work by a woman artist in the show, but it is a good one.

The Artist’s Sister at a Window (1869) features the signature characteristics of Berthe Morisot’s paintings. She often painted women lost in thought, and once you learn that her sister Edma was expecting a child when she sat for this painting, it’s easy to imagine the focus of her reverie. (Edma often modeled for her sister. See The Cradle on the Discussion Questions page, for a look at Edma as a new mother.) Berthe has shown Edma seated in an armchair by an open window, but oblivious to anything outside. She looks at a Japanese fan—a reference to the current fad of Japonisme—but does she see it? Berthe’s use of muted colors reinforces the pensive mood of the painting.

Something else might also have been on Edma’s mind when Berthe painted her during the autumn of 1869, shortly after she married and left Paris. It was the first time that the two sisters had been separated, and Berthe went for a visit as soon as Edma was settled. Although Edma had trained to be an artist, some thought a more talented artist than Berthe, she had succumbed to societal pressure to marry, which effectively ended her artistic career. Without the stimulation of other artists, and with domestic duties, and soon a child, to occupy her,

Not only does the fan symbolize Japonisme, but the painting itself exhibits its influence. Like the woodblock prints that were the rage, The Artist’s Sister at a Window shows a single figure against a plain background.

All of the Impressionists were interested in depicting modernity—the new broad boulevards, the café concerts and other entertainments where, for the first time, workers and haute-bourgeoises mingled. But as a woman, Berthe was unable to join them, or even to meet her colleagues at a café for talk about art. So for the most part, she showed women in contained spaces, not fully participating in the modern world. Through the French doors behind Edma, one can make out male figures standing under green awnings on balconies outside the modern apartment buildings across the street, observing the passers-by below. Edma remains inside.

Although this is an indoor scene, outdoor light pours in through those French doors. Berthe’s love of light is evident in the way she shows it reflecting off of the white door, edges the front of the armchair, and illuminates Edma’s peignoir.

Reverie, modernity, Japonisme, and light—these are as much a part of Berthe Morisot’s artistic palette as are her paints.

In La Luministe, I describe a similar painting, Mother and Sister of the Artist:

I had posed my subjects in the drawing room, with morning light pouring in the front windows, reflecting off the gilt-framed mirror behind the white sofa and falling on Edma’s white peignoir. I painted her without gesture or expression. The book Maman read was the focus of my sister’s reverie. She was no longer an artist, and not yet a mother. What, then, was the essence of Edma? It seemed that an absence of detail would allow the viewer to search for what she withheld from the rest of the world. A silent, still woman was nevertheless a woman with a complex inner life. She was well-dressed, prosperous and proper, but what was deeply feminine about her—about all women—was separate from that. To me, this secret self, keeping something unknown, was what defined a woman. 

Intimate Impressionism will travel to the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio from 9/3/14-1/4/15, to the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo 2/7/15-5/24/15, and then to the Seattle Art Museum from 11/15-1/4/2016.

Spotlight Artist: Lee Krasner (1908-1984)

                                                                 The Springs

It's interesting that two biographies of women Abstract Expressionists should be published concurrently.  But Joan Mitchell was considered part of the second generation of this art movement, while Lee Krasner was of the first generation, also known as the New York painters because for the first time, the center of the art world was no longer in Europe.

Lee Krasner's obstacles were also her inspirations:  Her parents were Russian Jews, looked down upon even by other immigrant groups.  (radicals)  She rebelled against her role as a Jewish woman from childhood, when she was forced to sit in a different part of the synagogue than did the men. She hated learning Hebrew, yet she later painted her canvases right to left, as one reads Hebrew.  And her affinity for illuminated manuscripts led to paintings like "Uncial" (1967), or more indirectly to her Little Image paintings, with its calligraphic brush marks.  Her life-long love of nature sprang from her upbringing on rural Long Island, although she said, "There are elements of nature in my work, but not in the sense of birds and trees and water...I might mean energy, motion, everything that's happening in and around me."

Krasner's biggest obstacle and greatest inspiration was her husband, Jackson Pollock.  While she had been a modernist painter long before he was (she studied with Hans Hoffman and Piet Mondrian, and tried her hand at Surrealism while Pollock was still painting in the realistic style of his mentor, Thomas Hart Benton), Lee Krasner would forever be considered under the influence of her more famous husband.  "I couldn't run out and do a one-woman job on the sexist aspects of the art world, continue my painting and stay in the role I was in as Mrs. Pollock...What I considered important is that I was able to work...I made my decisions."

Gail Levin details the almost super-human effort Krasner exerted to promote the self-destructive Pollock's career, while evolving through her own painting process.  The second-wave feminists of the 1970s finally saw to it that Krasner got the recognition she deserved as a founding member of the New York school of painters.

Spotlight Artist: Joan Mitchell (1925-1992)

   
                                                          Untitled, 1961

Because I'm reading Patricia Alber's new book, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter, that lady is my current spotlight artist.

As you look at Mitchell's painting on the right, keep in mind that this artist was a nationally ranked competitive ice-skater in her youth.  It's intriguing to think that the looping lines and cool colors in Untitled and other works were inspired by memories of gliding on the ice, although Mitchell denied the connection.

It's also fascinating to read about the role Mitchell's synesthesia played in her work.   This neurological condition, described by Albers as a "sensory cross-wiring in the brain...in which a stimulus to one of the senses triggers perceptions through another sense", turned out to be an invaluable resource for an artist.  For Mitchell, every letter of the alphabet was a different color, as was every emotion, every smell, everything. 

Joan Mitchell was a complicated woman.  She was brought up in a privileged environment, but chose to portray herself as a penniless artist.  She resisted being labelled an Abstract Expressionist, even though the man she considered her artistic father, William de Kooning, was a charter member of that movement.  Mitchell also resisted friendships with Grace Hartigan and Helen Frankenthaler, the other "lady painters" in her circle, preferring to be thought of as one of the guys. 

Reading biographies can be a dry experience, but Albers' voice sings throughout this book with a fluidity comparable to Mitchell's calligraphic brushstrokes. 

Spotlight Artist: Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665)

     There were expanded opportunities for women artists-- provided that one was from a well-off family--after the Renaissance.  (And provided that one's father was an open-minded Humanist who provided tutors to educate his daughters, or was an artist who taught them himself.)


     This was particularly true in Bologna, a "college town", proud of its women of achievement. When her father became incapacitated by gout and could no longer paint, Elisabetta supported her family.  While most considered her a prodigy, some questioned whether she produced so many paintings, so quickly, by herself. To put the issue to rest, Sirani performed for her admirers, completing a painting in a single day. Small wonder that she died of an ulcer at 25!

     During her short career, Elisabetta produced a minimum of 170 paintings. Although she focused on religious subjects and portraits, her masterpiece was "Porcia Wounding Her Thigh", an episode from the history of Julius Caeser and Brutus. It's worth considering how her work might have developed if she hadn't been forced to work so fast and focus on the most commercially successful subject matter. And if she had lived a full life...


     In 1994, the U.S. Postal Service chose Sirani's "Virgin and Child"  (at right) as its traditional Christmas stamp. She was the first, and to date the only, historical woman artist whose work has ever been chosen.