The exhibition in the Schirn Kunsthalle includes some 150 works (coming from numerous international museums such as the Musée d’Orsay, the Petit Palais, the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum New York, the National Gallery of Art Washington, the Kunsthalle Bremen, and the Museum Langmatt in Zurich, as well as from various private collections) and uses the example of four women painters to present women artists’ contribution to the Impressionist movement.
EVA GONZALÈS LE CHIGNON, 1865-70 |
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Everyone knows the names of famous Impressionists – Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro – but it is less well known that important women painters also belonged to their circle.
Berthe Morisot, (1841–1895) a successful and admired colleague, close friend of and model for Manet, was highly praised by critics for her relaxed brushstroke as the “most Impressionistic of the Impressionists.” Berthe Morisot was one of the founding members of the Impressionist movement. Her favorite subjects in painting comprised family scenes, portraits of women and children,
interiors, landscapes, and views of harbors. In 1877, she married Eugène Manet, Édouard Manet’s brother, with whom she had a daughter, Julie, who frequently posed for her.
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MARIE BRACQUEMOND LE GOUTER, 1880 |
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The American artist Mary Cassatt developed her unmistakable style in Paris and through her close contact with Degas. Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) moved to France in 1874 and joined the Impressionists in Paris. Her foremost subjects are portraits, scenes at the opera, and the relationship between mother and child – a theme to which she dedicated herself without sentimentality and relying on a style of her own.
And also...
Eva Gonzalès, a student of Manet, left behind an oeuvre of great quality though limited quantity as a result of her early death.
Marie Bracquemond exhibited with the Impressionists but began to compete with the work of her husband, Félix Bracquemond, and ultimately abandoned painting.
The four names serve as examples for the fact that considerably more women artists were active in that artistically and socio-politically turbulent epoch from about 1865 to 1895, producing highquality paintings, drawings, engravings, and sculptures, than described in traditional art history until recent years. Compared to other movements, Impressionism was particularly suited to accept also women within its ranks.
Further information
WOMEN IMPRESSIONISTS |
