The French Impressionist Berthe Morisot (1841-95) would be the topic of a serious London exhibition subsequent 12 months that can discover how a honeymoon journey to England left an enduring impression on her work.
In addition to specializing in the influence that 18th-century French artists akin to Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Antoine Watteau had on Morisot’s work, the Dulwich Image Gallery present would be the first to discover the essential affect of English painters like Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds.
“She was uncommon [amongst the Impressionists] in that enthusiasm,” says the exhibition’s co-curator Lois Oliver. Morisot “was notably excited by Gainsborough, Reynolds and [George] Romney. And there was little or no of that out there to see in France”. Morisot encountered works by the artists throughout a single journey to England in 1875 for her honeymoon. Following her marriage to Eugène Manet (brother of Édouard Manet), Morisot and her new husband visited London and the Isle of Wight, together with the Cowes crusing regatta, in addition to the Goodwood horse races (“all of the modern summer season issues to do in England”, Oliver says). A portrait of Manet painted in the course of the journey, Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight (1885), will likely be one of many highlights of the present.
Berthe Morisot’s Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight (1885)
© Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
The couple spent a lot of August that 12 months in London, visiting the Nationwide Gallery and the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in addition to non-public collections. “She stated that all the pieces she noticed made her wish to turn out to be completely acquainted with English portray,” Oliver says.
Morisot was the one feminine founding member of the Impressionist motion and has lengthy been overshadowed by her extra well-known male counterparts. “She was probably the most important Impressionists [and] was concerned in organising all of their exhibitions,” Oliver says.
Berthe Morisot’s Self-portrait (1885)
© Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
The Dulwich exhibition would be the artist’s first within the UK since 1950, “which is type of astonishing while you assume how essential she was for the Impressionist motion”, Oliver says. It’s being organised with the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, which holds probably the most essential collections of Morisot’s work. The Dulwich Image Gallery holds key items by lots of the 18th-century French artists who influenced Morisot and it is going to be the primary time her work is proven alongside work by artists akin to Fragonard and Watteau.
Lots of the work within the present have additionally by no means been exhibited within the UK. Among the many highlights of the will likely be Apollo revealing his divinity to the shepherdess Issé, after François Boucher (1892), just lately acquired by the Marmottan at public sale, and Julie Manet together with her Greyhound Laerte (1893). The latter options the artist’s daughter in addition to a Louis XVI-style chair, certainly one of a number of items of 18th-century furnishings that Morisot owned, which seem “very often in her work”, Oliver says.
Berthe Morisot’s Apollo revealing his divinity to the shepherdess Issé, after François Boucher (1892)
© Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
A current Morisot survey that toured museums in Dallas, Philadelphia, Quebec, Madrid and Paris, has helped the artist is acquire renewed and deserved consideration. Oliver agrees that this UK exhibition is “lengthy overdue”. “She was probably the most unique of the Impressionists and this will likely be a extremely distinctive angle on her work,” she provides.
• Berthe Morisot: Impressionism and the 18th Century, Dulwich Image Gallery, London, 5 April-10 September 2023
