Berthe Morisot

Berthe Morisot was French painter and printmaker and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. Morisot was born in Bourges, Cher, France, into a successful bourgeois family. As the child of upper middle-class parents, she was given appropriate education. In 1858 she and her sister Edma left to study under Joseph-Benoit Guichard, a pupil of Ingres and Delacroix. In the same year they registered as copyists in the Louvre, copying Veronese and Rubens. The sisters were introduced to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot in 1861. Morisot formed a close familiarity with Manet, who became her brother-in-law, and she served as model for several of his best-known paintings. They both deeply influenced each other's artistic development. Her own later work inclined toward pure Impressionism in its representation of light, while keeping an unusual smoothness of brushwork. Her early subject matter included landscapes and marine scenes; later she most frequently painted tranquil portraits of mothers and children.