Berthe Morisot. The Impressionist Woman Painter

For the first time in Spain, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid, Spain) is presenting a retrospective of the work of the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot. The exhibition includes 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.

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.

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.

Date: until February 12.
Location: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Paseo del Prado 8, 28014 Madrid. Spain.
Opening hours: from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 7pm. Saturdays 2011 from 10am to 11pm.


See some of the painter's works in the following slideshow: