Berthe Morisot, Rococo Impressionist

"I like either extreme novelty or things of the past," said Berthe Morisot. Just what that meant for her art is revealed in Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impresssionism, a sparkling, fresh show at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London, and an exhibition that changed our view of the leading woman Impressionist.

We were a little bit apprehensive on the way to Dulwich, with lingering memories of an extensive Morisot retrospective in Lille about 20 years ago that we unexpectedly found quite dull and repetitive. This new show turns out to be a bit of a revelation, focusing as it does on her fascination with and imaginative reworking of pictures by French and British 18th-century artists. And as for some of her late work.... it's so reminiscent of Edvard Munch. We certainly weren't expecting that.

This Self-Portrait is the very first picture in the exhibition. Morisot painted it in her mid-40s, and it's a very self-assured picture, and a very modern one. Her palette at the bottom left is just a whirl of brushstrokes. She's not actually wearing a ribbon of the légion d'honneur, the highest French order of merit, but the red flower on her dress seems painted to look as if she is. She would certainly have deserved one. 

Morisot was right up there at the very top of the Impressionist movement with Renoir, Degas and Monet. She took part in all put one of the eight Impressionist exhibitions from 1874 to 1886. Although women were still excluded from the official path of art training, she came from an affluent family who could afford to pay for private lessons. Camille Corot was among her teachers. 

While male Impressionists portrayed a world of crowded cafés and theatres, Morisot tended to concentrate on more intimate scenes -- domestic or in the world outside -- that reflected her own position as a member of the bourgeoisie. Early on, we get to see two paintings created on the same day, depicting a Summer's Day captured In the Bois de Boulogne. They were posed using professional models, and they're really vibrant, with rapidly flowing brushwork. One model recalled that Morisot would start work outside early to avoid curious onlookers. Out at half-past six, Morisot would have finished her picture by nine, and they'd be home for a cup of coffee. 

But Dulwich's main focus in this show is to look at Morisot's attraction to the art of a century earlier, and in 1875 she exhibited this painting, called At the Ball. It was a period when 18th-century art, which had fallen out of favour following the Revolution, was being rediscovered in France. 

The sitter is holding an 18th-century fan -- Morisot's own -- opened to show the picture on it of a fête galante, one of those Rococo outdoor courtship scenes immortalised by Antoine Watteau. Below the painting, you can see exhibited the actual fan, on loan to Dulwich like a large number of the paintings displayed here from the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, which has the largest collection anywhere of Morisot's work. 

Morisot's technique, delicacy of touch and subject matter drew praise from critics who compared her with that French master of the Rococo, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, best known to a British audience as the painter of The Swing.  

The elegant style of the 18th century is expressed in this portrait, attributed to François Boucher, of Louis XV's mistress, Madame de Pompadour. 

And here's Morisot's hommage -- Reclining Woman in Grey -- with the pose, the gown and its trimmings all recalling the Rococo period. What a contrast, though, between the fine precision of Boucher's application of his paint and the flurry of strokes from Morisot's brush.  

Morisot married Eugène Manet, brother of Edouard, in late 1874, and the following summer they travelled to England on their honeymoon. 

They spent time on the Isle of Wight, and here's Eugène sitting at the window of their cottage in Cowes, gazing out at the picture-within-a-picture of the garden, the promenade and passers-by and the yachts beyond. The gauzy net curtains seem only to enhance the Impressionism of the view. 

Eugène looks keen to get outside and into the sun, and it's lucky that Morisot was such a rapid worker, because he was apparently a very impatient model. 

In this part of the show, we find out how Morisot visited London's art galleries and museums during their stay. "The things I saw gave me a great desire to become thoroughly acquainted with English painting," she wrote. Their lodgings were just across the road from Hertford House, home to a spectacular private assemblage of art that would in later years be opened to the public as the Wallace Collection. 

Among the paintings Morisot would have seen in Hertford House is this portrait by George Romney of the actress and all-round celebrity Mrs Mary Robinson. It was clearly a pose that stuck with Morisot, inspiring this 1880 portrait of a fashionable woman, complete with muff. The curators have placed the two paintings side by side so you can appreciate just how similar they are.

Several other Morisots in this show are placed alongside paintings from the 18th-century artists who inspired her: Chardin and Fragonard, Reynolds and Gainsborough.   

Towards the end of the exhibition, things take a more surprising turn. You don't really expect Impressionists to be painting mythological scenes, but in her 40s and 50s Morisot created her own reinterpretations of passages from major mythological works in French collections. 

From a corner of a Boucher painting centred on Apollo in the museum in Tours, she took two nymphs embracing beside a woodland stream and rendered them in her own style amid sinewy brushstrokes of vivid greenery. The work impressed Claude Monet, who was later to use similar effects in his paintings of water lilies.  

Morisot's husband died in 1892, and this picture by Morisot a year later captures their daughter Julie, apparently in mourning dress, with her pet dog, and a shadowy empty chair, perhaps evoking the loss of Eugène. It's the last picture in the exhibition -- Morisot herself died in 1895, aged just 54, following influenza and pneumonia. 

Along with another late picture in this show, the resemblance to Munch's developing style is uncanny. Just look at Julie's eyes. In the same year, 1893, Munch painted The Scream. What direction might Morisot's work have taken had she lived?

Practicalities

Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impresssionism runs at Dulwich Picture Gallery until September 10. It's open from 1000 to 1700 from Tuesdays to Sundays, as well as Bank Holiday Mondays, and tickets cost £16.50 with a Gift Aid donation or £15 without. To be sure of getting in when you want to, you should book online here. Allow about an hour to see the show. Tickets also cover entry to the gallery's permanent collection, which includes a number of Rembrandts, such as Girl at a Window, and perhaps most notably, Gainsborough's portrait of the Linley sisters.

The gallery is about 10 minutes walk from both West Dulwich station, for trains from Victoria, and North Dulwich station, for trains from London Bridge.

Images

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), Self-Portrait, 1885. © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Berthe Morisot, At the Ball, 1875. © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Attributed to François Boucher (1703-1770), Madame de Pompadour, c. 1758, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
Berthe Morisot, Reclining Woman in Grey, 1879, Private collection

Berthe Morisot, Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight, 1875. © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
George Romney (1734-1802), Mrs Mary Robinson, 1780-81, Wallace Collection, London
Berthe Morisot, Winter, 1880, Dallas Museum of Art
Berthe Morisot, Two Nymphs, from Apollo Revealing his Divinity to the Shepherdess Issé, after François Boucher, 1892. © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Berthe Morisot, Julie Manet with her Greyhound Laerte, 1893. © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris