Art: Berthe & Her Circle

Art lovers in Toronto last week got one of the world’s rare good looks at the work of a ranking woman painter of the 19th century. Her name was Berthe Morisot, and she lived from 1841 to 1895 at the height of French impressionism, yet today only a few know her name. She held but one big exhibit during her lifetime; ever since, most of her works have been out of sight. Toronto’s Art Gallery spent a year negotiating with her daughter in Paris, finally managed to borrow 30 paintings on condition that the gallery would insure them for more than $1,000,000.

Toronto saw pictures as gentle and untroubled as garden roses: pink-cheeked girls doing their hair, Sunday picnics in the park, swans, haystacks, cherry pickers, and happy children with dolls. Berthe Morisot’s colors were bright and sunny, her figures nicely drawn and set in an atmosphere of misty calm. Next to her works were ten other paintings from her collection, by such greats as Degas, Renoir, Manet, Monet; these showed where Berthe had learned her style.

Mama Was Watchful. Daughter of a wealthy government official and distantly related to France’s 18th century Jean Fragonard, Berthe took up drawing at 16 merely as a social grace. Mama Morisot traipsed along on visits to her instructor’s studio, to keep a watchful eye on the proceedings. Berthe was clumsy at first, but within three years she was studying with Corot, learning to paint landscapes in his fashion.

Then, when she was 27, Berthe was introduced to a rising young artist named Edouard Manet, and the meeting colored her whole life. She became more serious about art, wrote Manet long, involved letters on what she had learned from Corot, persuaded him to leave his dim studio to paint bright countrysides and farms. In Paris, she often posed for the young painter, developed a womanly jealousy when he sometimes used another model. Berthe never admitted anything more than friendship for Manet; he was a married man. But she stayed close by, eventually married his brother Eugene.

Monet Was Generous. Berthe turned her home over to impressionism’s rising lights. She befriended Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley and Pissaro; Claude Monet generously painted a large landscape for her when she mentioned that she needed something to decorate her studio. Pierre Auguste Renoir joined her circle while he was still painting china plates and window shades for a living. Berthe helped set up exhibits of the group’s work, her own included, joined in organizing auctions, and spent hours trying to bring unfriendly critics around to impressionism.

Through it all, Berthe never got around to holding a solo show of her own paintings. But in 1892, after her husband died, Berthe left Paris for a few months to paint, then returned for her first one-man show. Paris critics nodded approval, but few people cheered a woman painter in those days. She never gave them another chance. Two years later, at the age of 54, Berthe Morisot sickened and died; her will named Auguste Renoir guardian of her 16-year-old daughter Julie.

At last week’s show, 3,700 people flocked through the gallery in the first seven days. A special TV program was set up to show her paintings to thousands more; the critics gave her a hearty cheer. After a month in Toronto, the pleased sponsors announced, Berthe and her circle will take off for a two-year tour of a dozen Canadian and U.S. galleries from Portland, Ore. to Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.