Dear Reader,
As Word Raccoon and I did a quick stop through our favorite part of the Art Institute last week, the Impressionist galleries (spread too far apart for our taste), we stopped before Berthe Morisot’s Young Girl with a Hat. Having come for the Cassatt exhibit, it was impossible not to compare two of the leading Impressionist painters who happened to be women.
While Morisot was a founding member of the Impressionists’ Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc., Cassatt was asked by Edgar Degas to join in 1879, coincidentally a year that Morisot did not exhibit because of giving birth to her daughter Julie. However, the two did exhibit together in the 1880 Impressionist exhibition.
Both were instrumental in bringing women’s largely unrepresented everyday lives to art. On the one hand, critics saw the topics as naturally something women would know about, almost patronizingly, while simultaneously seeing the works as fitting of “women” painters and seeing the topics as not worthy of “real” art.
Also, both women were talked about in light of men with whom they had strong artistic ties and relationships: Morisot was always mentioned in association with the man who ultimately became her brother-in-law, Édouard Manet, while Cassatt was mentioned in the same breath as Edgar Degas who, as I said above, invited her to join the Impressionist society.
WR, this is meant to be about our visit to the museum, not an essay on the two women painters.
Let us say instead how we paused before Morisot’s painting and compared the two painters because not only were they both women, they painted at the same time. They embraced a painting style that was daring and brave. And they contributed to the advance of women’s place in painting, while using “feminine” colors and subjects. Their paintings are both traditionally beautiful but provocative. Undercover feminism, I’d like to think.
Kinda like blending vegetables up and feeding them to your children.
Not that Cassatt had children. She decided to focus on her art.
And Morisot only had the one, although by choice or not I don’t know. Obviously, she kept painting, too, sometimes painting her daughter.
We don’t usually mention men painters and fatherhood, but because Cassatt and Morisot elevated domesticity, their motherhood is pertinent.
Will the reader indulge a side trip?
I have visited Morisot’s grave. Would you like to see a photo?
What’s that, it looks like that’s a sculpture of Édouard Manet atop it?
That’s because it’s the family grave, and the initial stone and sculpture honors him. It’s not until you look down at the ground that you see her and her husband’s name!
WR was scandalized when she saw that. How dare they!
I don’t know if I’ve written about that moment before or not, but WR was drawn to that section of the sprawling cemetery and found the family grave almost without trying. (Which, naturally, it was the primary reason she was there.) She went to see her Writing Mother not long after that and shared her disgust with her art-loving mentor.
But also, if graves can be said to give off vibes, she felt them there. (Alas, WR is not sure where her photos of the graves have digitally migrated. That was a laptop ago. But a photo of it is easily searchable online.)
Anyway, Dear Reader, this is the conversation we would have had if we had been visiting the Art Institute together.
Right now, WR needs to make breakfast. She’s thinking sausage-and-egg bagel sandwiches.
Drema