arts analysis

Berthe Morisot and the Feminizing of Impressionism*

TAMAR GARB

•Perspectil'es 011 1\1oriso1. ed. by T.J. Edelstein; N. Y .: Hud<ion Hills Pre.s 1990.

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In an article published in I.A Nouvelle revue in the spring of J 896. 1he ye.Jr of !he posthumous retrospective of Berthe Moriso!'s work, the prominent critic Camille Mauclair announced char Impressionism was dead.1 Jt had become history. II was an art fonn that had lived off its own sensuality. and ii had died of it. It was possible. now. in the 1890s, 10 de1ec1 the unsatisfactory and ilJusory principle on which ii had been founded. For Mauclair. Impressionism was a style based on the misguided aim of restricting itself 10 !he seizing of visceral sensation alone. h rejected a ll general and underlying truths in favor of the appe.Jmnce of !he moment. hs meagre re- sources were the hand and the eye. Like many of the supporters of Symbolism in the 1890s. Muuclair approved of the Impressionists' assertion of "s ubjectivity" ("nature seen through a temperament," in Emile Zola's words) and their rejection of old-fashion beliefs in academic beauty. but he objected 10 their reliance on what he called "realism." By precluding from its orbit anything that was not to be found in the world of immediate experience, he c la imed, Impressionism had des1royed itself. While understandably avoiding the excesses of idealism, ii had lapsed into crass n1aterialisrn.2

Although this view of Impressionism became prevalent in the 1890s, Im- pressionism had for some time been regarded as an art form of spontaneous ex- pression, as a means of find ing the self in the execution of a painting whose very technique came co represenc a direcc and naive vision, however hard won. For its supporters it could be defended in terms of its "sincere" and "truthfu l" revelation of the temperament of the artist, who filtered the world of visual sen- sation through the physical acts of making marks on a surface, approximacing those sensations by inventing an appropriate technical language and chereby presenting a just and personal vision of the outside world. For many of its de- tractors. though, Impressionist painting could be construed as a thoughcless, mechanical accivity, which required no exercise of the intellect. no regard to time-worn Jaws of pictorial constniction, and involved simply the unrnediatcd reflex recordings of sensory impulses. a practice thac smacked of both deca- dence and s uperficiality.

232 Berthe Morlsot and the Feminizing of Impressionism

It was, however, Impressionism's alleged auachment to surface, ilS very celebration of sensory experience born of the rapid perception and notation of fleeting impressions, that was to make it regarded in the 1890s as a practice most suited to women's temperament and character.3 Indeed, Mauclair himself. while denigrating Impressionism at large, called it a "feminine art" and pro- claimed its relevance for the one artist whom he saw as having been its legiti- mate protagonist-a woman, Berthe Morisot. In turn, Impressionism's demise is traced to its allegedly "feminine" characteristics: its sensuality, its depen- dence on sensation and superficial appearances, its physicality, and its capri- ciousness.4

While the discourse that produced this apparently seamless fit between Impressionist superficiality and women's nature attained the level of a com- monplace in avant-garde c ircles in the 1890s, those critics who read the art press had long heard Mori sot's works discussed in terms that inscribed them as quintessentially "feminine."5 In 1877 Georges Riviere had commented on her "charming pictures, so refined and above all so feminine.''{; When Lawulresses Hanging Ow the Wash was exhibited in I 876 and Yo11J1g Wommr in a Ball Gown in I 880. the works were praised for their delicate use of bnrshwork, their subtlety and clarity of color. their refinement. grace, and elegance. their delight- fully light touch.7 Her paintings were repeatedly praised for what was described as their "feminine" charm. Although many critics lamented the lack of finish in her work. some could still observe as Nbert Wolff did that: "Her feminine grace lives amid the excesses of a frenzied mind."8 She was seen, at worst, as the "victim of the system of painting that she has adopted."9 On one occasion her lack of "finish" was attributed to a primordial feminine weakness. Paul de Charry, writing in Le Pays, asked, "With this talent, why does she not take the trouble to finish?" and answered himself. "Morisot is a woman. and therefore capricious. Unfortunately, she is like Eve who bites the apple and then gives up on it too soon. Too bad, since she biles so well.''10

It is true that the quali ties of '·grace" and "delicacy" were on some occa- s ions used to describe the techniques of the male Impressionists. Alfred Sisley was even credited with a "charming talent," and his The Bridge at Argemeui/ i11 1872 was said 10 show his "taste, delicacy and tranquility."11 CamiUe Pissarro on the occasion of showing his Path through the Woods ( 1877) was said to be gifted with a fine sensibi lity and great ''delicacy.''12 But the analyses of work by men in these terms alone were few and far between. What is more int~resting than such occasional applications of traditionally "feminine" attributes to indi- vidual male artists is the "feminizing of Impressionism" as a whole. 13

The frrst critic to develop a sustained argument seeking to prove that Im- pressionism was an innately ·'feminine" style was the Symbolist sympathizer Theodor de Wyzewa. who, in an article written in March 1891, claimed that the rnarks made by Impressionist painters were expressive of the qualities inn"insic to women.14 For example, the use of bright and clear tones paralleled what he called the lightness, the fresh clarity, and the superficial elegance that make up

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a woman's vision. It was, he wrote, appropriate that women should not be con- cerned with the deep and intimate relationships of things. that they should see the "universe like a gracious, mobile surface, infinitely nuanced ... . Only a woman has the right to rigorously practice the Impressionist system, she alone can limit her effort to the translation of impressions." In his preface to the cata- logue for her first solo exhibition, in 1892. Gustave Geffroy had called Morisot's a "painting of a Jived and observed reality. a delicate painting ... which is a fem inine painting."15 In the same year Georges Lecomte had claimed that Impressionism. with ics "sincerity" and "immediacy," was more suited than any other mode of expression to allow "this delicate female temperament which no external influence alters or corrupts. to develop." t6 Writing in the Revue en· cyclopedique in 1896, Claude Roger-Marx felt able to assert that ''the tenn Im- pressionism itself announces a manner of observation and notation which is well suited to the hypersensitivity and nervousness of women."17

These sentin1ents ,vere echoed in a revie,v of the work of won1en artjst.s in Boston by the Parisian critic S. C. de Soissons, who stressed that the superficial- ity that anended woman's fitting restriction of her sensibility to the mimetic function central to Impressionism would be recompensed by her "incomparable charm. her fine grace and sweetness."18 Arguing for the suitability of Impres- sionist technique 10 women's manner of perception, de Soissons wrote:

One can understand that \\1omen have no originality of thought. and that literature and music have no fe1ninine character; but surely women kno,v ho,v to observe. and \\•hat they see is quite different frorn that ,vhich men see. and the art which they put in their gestures. in their toilet. in the decoration of their environment is sufficient to give us the idea of an instillctive, of a peculiar genius ,vhic.h resides in each one of them.19

Women arcislS. according to de Soissons and his colleagues, could give expres- sion to their intrinsic natures by being Impressionists. What was peculiar to women were the sensitivity of their sensory perceptions and the lack of devel- opment of their powers of abstraction. What was peculiar to Impressionism was its insistence on the recording of surface appearance alone. As such they were made for each other. A particular construction of "Woman" and "Impression- ism," which becomes operative and meaningful within the political and aes- thetic clima1e of the 1890s (although its formation can be traced back for decades and its influence can still be seen today), is at stake here. In the context of the Symbolist valoriiation of the imagination on the one hand and the resur- gence of various forms of idealism on the other, Impressionism came to connote a relatively inadequate aesthetic model based on the liltering and recording of impressions. hastily perceived, of the outside world. "Woman" was the grace- ful. delicate, channing creature, nervous in temperament, superficial in her un· derstanding of the world, dexterous with her hands, sensitive to sensory stimuli and subjective in her responses, who could most legitimately make use of this

234 Berthe Morisot and the FeminiZfng Of Impressionism

mode of expression. Berthe Morisot came to represent the happy fusion of these t,vo constructions.

In order for the myth of Morisot's well -adjusted femininity to function as naturalized speech. however, her artistic practice had to be seen as the result of an unmediated outpouring. The condition of myth according to Roland Barthes is that it emerge "without any trace of the history which has caused it."20 Im- plicit in much of the Morisot criticism during this period is the assumption that her painting was achieved without effort. Gustave Geffroy compared her hands to those of a magician. Her paintings were the result of "delicious hallucina- tions" that allowed her quite naturally to transport her "love of things" to an in- trinsic gift for painting.2t Moreover, her strength was said to reside in her femi- nine powers of observation that allowed for an intuitive filtering of the ouLSide world, uncorrupted, in Georges Lecomte· s words, by any learned system of rules.22

Morisot's success, the critic George Moore wrote, lay in her investing "her art with all her femininity," thereby creating a "style" that is''no dull par- ody of ours" (men's): her art is ''all womanhood-sweet and gracious. tender and wistful womanhood."23 But such gifts. necessarily, set her apart from other women artists. She had since the I 880s been compared with her fema le contem- poraries whom she was said to oumrip in "femininity.'' The most famous casu- alties in such comparisons were Rosa Bonheur, Marie Basbkirtseff, and even Morisot's fellow Impressionist Mary Cassatt, described by Roger-Marx as "that masculine American.·•24 None of these artists eschewed linearity, precision of execution. or contrived compositional arrangements. None of them was pre- pared to concentrate on color at the expense or line. All of them were accom- plished at drawing. As such they were often seen to be reneging on their natural feminine attributes. The general mass of women artists were regularly described as imitative, sterile, and unconsciously derivative. They had, in the words of de Soissons, "a hatred for feminine visions; Lhey make every effort to efface that from their eyes." They wished to usurp a masculine mode of seeing. Writing to his assumed male audience, he claimed:

Many even succeed in assimilating happily our habits of vision; they kllO\v mar- velously well the sccrecs of design and of colors. and one could consider them as artists. ir it \\1ere not for the art:iticiaJ impression ,vhich ,,..e received in regarding their pictures. One feels that it is not natural that they should see the world in lhe way in which rhey paint, and that whiJe they execute pictures \Vith clever hands they should see with masculine eyes.25

The slippage between seeing and representing is easi ly achieved. While vision is fleetingly acknowledged to be habitual and in thac sense cultural, de Soissons quickly moves on to the conflation, common among his peers, of seeing with rendering. If women are constitutionally different from men, it follows that they should see differently. Art, in this discourse, is produced as the extension of a

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manner of seeing and is, in that sense, an extension of a process that is by nature sexually differentiated. Where Morisot's talent allegedly triumphed over her misguided female contemporaries was in her intuitive translation of perception through a natural ability to draw and harmonize color. Her work seemed. to her critics, to be untainted by any intellectual system of drawing or composition. She was praised, therefore, for not reneging on the characteristic intrinsic to her ' sex. As the Journal des artistes critic put ii in 1892, she was praiseworthy for the appropriateness of her ambition, which. unlike that of other would-be women painters. propelled her toward an art "entirely imbued with the essential virtues of her sex," an art that was devoted to the idea of a ,;pei11111re femi- nine. "26 Her work managed, according to Theodore Duret, to escape "falling into that dryness and affectation which usually characterises a woman's work- manship."27 Lecomte praised her for resisting the temptation of creating ''an ar- tificial nature, a man's vision." She managed to ignore the sentimentality and gratuitous prettiness to which most women artists fell pre),,28 According to Roger-Marx she ;·escaped the Jaw which pushes women t0wards a sterility of invention, passivity and pastiche."29 By being an Impressionist, Morisoc was being. truly. herself.

If such claims are to make sense at all, it is crucial to appreciate the con- text within wltich these comparative assessment~ were made. Morisot, exem- plary hau1e bourgeoise. a "figure de race." as Mallarmt called her, came to represent for her admirers the acceptable female artisc.30 In her refined person and her secluded domestic life-style, she was seen to embody the dignity. grace, and charm regarded as the mark of a peculiarly French femininity. In compari- son with the deviant women who threatened to disturb traditional social and moral values, Lhe femmes 11011ve/les, focus of anxiety for numerous French com- mentators in I 896. the year of the large International Feminist Congress in Paris, Berthe Morisot. wife, mother. and elegant hostess, could be acclaimed as a suitably womanly woman. What was more, her wholehearted adoption of Im- pressionist techniques could express an intrinsically feminine vision at the very moment women were being accused of denying their unique qualities and adopting the perverse posture of the hommesse. Paris of the 1890s, character- i1.ed by fear of depopulation and a suspicion of the recently proven German mil· itary strength and growing industrial prowess, saw the collaboration of scien- tific populists, politicians. and social theorists to create a xenophobic defense of the notion of a "racial'' Frenchness, centering on the traumatic Dreyfus affair at home and the auempts of the assimilationists in the colonies. It was to women that many of the commentators turned for salvation. If women did noc renege on their natural duties, France's future would be assured.31 Berche Morisot's work and person came to symbolize for her supporters. therefore, the essence of a Frenchness under threat and of a femininity at risk.32 It is not surprising that her paintings were embraced by many of her defenders as, in the words of Lhe avid Francophile George Moore, ;,the only pictures painted by a woman that could not be destroyed without creating a blank. a hiatus in the history of art.''33

236 Berthe Morlsot ond the FemlnlZlng of lmp,esslonism

The discourse on art and femininity that produced Berthe Morisot as its heroine must also be situated within the more specific debates on women's po- tential and actual contribution to art at their height in Paris in the late 1880s and 1890s. The mobilization of women in organizations to represent their own inter- ests had resulted in the foundation and growth of the Union des femmes pein- tres et sculpteurs, formed in 1881. which by the 1890s offered a venue for the display of some one thousand works by women at its annual exhibitions.34 This decade witnessed conce11ed campaigns for women's professional rights. Atten- tion was focused on the protracted struggle of women artists, led by the leaders of the Union des femmes peintres et sculpteurs, to open tuition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to women. to end the male monopoly on the competition for the Prix de Rome, and to elect women to Salon juries and to the Acad~mie fran9aise. Such initiatives and the Union leadership's policy to encourage the press to review the women's exhibitions catalyzed a public debate on women's relationship to artistic practice.

Discussion of women· s art at the Union exhibitions was permeated with the same concerns evident in the Morisot criticism. But whereas many critics felt satisfied that Morisot's oeuvre in the 1890s adequately and appropriately expressed the femininity of its creator, such was not the case at the Union. Many of the critics were disappointed at the neutrality of the work, at its appar- ent sexual indifference. Besides the abundance of Oower paintings that the crit· ics expected from an exhibition of women's work, there was little in the art it- self to prove it had been created by the hands of women. In a culture that constructed masculine and feminine subjects as intrinsically different. critics wanted art to provide a concrete instance, a visible manifestation. of difference. When that did not occur, women were accused of masculinilation. Critics com- plained that women mimicked the work of their male teachers. Some, like Charles Dargenty of the Co11rrier de /'cm, even contended that the overeduca- tion of women was to blame. If only women would remain untutored and nat- ural, their work would express their innate characters and not the lessons ab- sorbed from their male mentors. 35

Against such a background Morisot's apparent ability to harness the art of her time into a practice that expressed her femininity deserved the highest praise. While many critics commented on her indebtedness to Manet, most praised her for successfully transforming his art into one of grace and charm be- fitting a lady of her class and background. She translated his lessons into ,;a lan- guage which is very much her own."36 And it was not, as we have suggested. primarily in the subject matter of her paintings that Morisot's femininity was seen to be most evident. Although critics commented on the woman 's world she pictured, her true femininity was seen to lie in her manner of perceiving and recording that world: "Close the catalogue and look at the work full of freshness and delicacy, executed with a lightness of b111sh. a finesse which flows from a grace which is entirely feminine ... : IL is the poem of the modern woman, imagined and dreamed by a woman," wrote one enthusiast.37 Femininity in

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painting, according to these critics, was a question of technique. although to name it thus would have brought it into the realm of conscious choice rather than unmediated expression. To function ideologically, Morisot's adherence to a particular set of pictorial practices had to be viewed as an unconscious and happy expression of self and sex.

That certain kinds of mark making were regarded as masculine and others as feminine was by no means accidental. The debates on the relatives merit~ of dessi11 and couleur had been couched in gendered terms since at least the seven- teenth century. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, sexual dif- ference provided one of many ways of conceptualizing the relative merits of the terms of this binary opposition and seems to have operated more on the level of metaphor than as a framework for the assessment of the pictorial practices suited to men and women. By tlic midnineteenth century, drawing, dessin, with it~ connotations of linearity and reason, and the closely associated design, des- sei11, with its connotations of rational planning and cerebral organization of the clements on the surface, were firmly gendered in the masculine. 111cy were not only descriptive terms but indicators of a manner of perceiving exclusively suited to the male of the species. Color, on the other hand, with its associations with contingency, Oux, change. and surface appearance. was firmly grounded in the sphere of the feminine.38

For late nineteenth·century students the gendering of formal language was most clearly expressed in Charles Blanc's widely used textbook Grammaire historique des arts du dessi11 ( 1867) with which most fin-de-siecle artists and critics were familiar. Blane proclaimed the dominance of line over color, taking issue with the relative importance that thinkers like Diderot had attributed to color. "Drawing," he stated, ;,is the masculine sex in art, color is its feminine sex:•39 Drawing's importance lay in the fact that it was the basis of all three grands arts: architecture, sculpture, and painting. whereas color was essential only to the third. But the relationship between color and drawing within paint- ing it~elf. Blanc wrote, was like the relationship between women and men: "The union of drawing and color is necessary for the engendering of painting, just as is the union between man and woman for engendering humanity, but it is neces- sary that drawing retains a dominance over color. If it were otherwise, painting would court it~ own ruin; it would be lost by color as humanity was lost by Eve.''40

Color plays the feminine role in art, ''the role of sentiment; submissive to drawing as sentiment should be submissive to reason, it adds charm, expression and grace."41 What is more, it must submit to the discipline of line if it is not to become out of control. A fonnal hierarchy is framed within an accepted hierar- chy of gender that function s as its defense. The language of form and the lan- guage of sexual difference mutually inflect one another. creating a naturalized metaphoric discourse that operates on the level of common sense in late nine- teenth-century parlance.

Such claims would not have made sense had they not drawn upon as-

238 Berthe Morisot and the Feminizing of Impressionism

sumptions deeply embedded in nineteenth-century culture and legitimated across a number of discourses. Aesthetic theory was not alone in representing the world to icself in gendered terms. Indeed it provided only one site among many for the articulation of sexual difference. Where the nineteenth century's approach differed from previous centuries' was in its attempts to understand these differences scientifically, to prove them empirically and thus use them as the basis for social theory. What had been the stuff of religion, philosophy, and common sense became increasingly a matter for medicine. the new discipline of psychology, and social policy. Where the theologians and artists had used faith and metaphor to support these contentions, now the scientists offered "facts" and "evidence."

In the face of nineteenth-century feminist agitation, the conservative med- ical and anthropological establishments used science to corroborate the belief in the natural hierarchy of the sexes.42 Scientists' overriding conclusion was that women were not equipped to deal with the superior mental functions, especially those for abstract thought. In organizing thoughts. synthesizing material, and making judgments based on evidence, women and people from so-called infe- rior races were stunted. Such inferiority was physically determined and de- pended on differences in the structure, size, and weight of the human brain. Al- though the relevance of these factors in determining mental capacities was disputed and the findings of experiments often hotly contested, the discoveries of craniology, as the pseudoscience of comparative brain measurement came to be called, generally endorsed the contemporary view of men and women. What was controversial was not the belief in the superiority of European males i1self but the craniologists' conviction !hat it could be proven 1hrough measurement and quantification. As each form or comparative analysis was shown to be inad- equate because it failed to prove the known "facts." new and more complicated instrument~ and procedures were developed. There were, of course, social theo- rists who thought the scientists had got it all wrong, but !hey produced their own evidence based on evolutionary theory, social conditioning, or simple ob- servation to support essentialist theories of sexual difference.43 While not all spoke of womcn·s inferiority to men. all were com•inced of their difference. The manner of describing this difference and the values placed on it were what varied.

Science·s findings by no means remained the preserve of the experts. Robert Nye has shown that medical theories pervaded everyday life in late nine- teenth-century France and that doctors became credible mediators between lab- oratory experiments and society's problems.44 Research findings were widely disseminated in popular scientific and general journals, the finer points of dis- pute and doubt often eradicated. A general reference book like the Grande en- cyc/opedie, for example, drew heavily on current scientific knowledge in its entry for femme. Henri de Varigny, the author of the article, wrote that the dif- ferences between men and women could be explained through anatomical and physiological factors. The origin of woman's menwl weakness was found in the

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structure of her brain, which de Yarigny described as " less wrinkled, its convo- lutions ... less beautiful, less ample" than the masculine brain. In men, he as- serted, "the frontal lobes, in which it is agreed 1hat the organ for intellectual op- era1ions and superior psychic functions are placed, are prcponderan1; !hey are also much more beautiful and voluminous when it is a question of the more civilised raccs."45 Men also. he added, were endowed with greater blood irriga- tion to the brain than women, which was presumed to help their capacity for thought. Theorists like Alfred Fouillee, favorite of Republican poli1icians, who were skeptical of such forms of explanation, nevertheless endorsed the belief in men's superior capacities for rational and abstract thought. Although he dis- tanced himself from the evidence used by the well-known defenders of mascu- line superiority Gusrnve Le Bon and Cesare Lombroso, who were widely quoted during the period, Fouillee endorsed the universally held belief in women's intellectual inferiority. The cause of this he attributed to women's so- cial role: "Woman's brain is now Jess capable of prolonged and intense intellec- tual efforts, but the reason is en1irely creditable to her: her role in the fami ly in- volves a development of heart-life and moral foree ra1her than of brain force and intellectual life."46

The idea that women's mental capacities were necessarily stunted so that they could fulfill their maternal role was widespread. Pregnancy and menstrua- tion were widely thought to lead to mental regression, and women's generative capacities were regarded as responsible for their innate nervousness and irri- tability. The development of women's intellectual capacities, it was feared, would result in the deterioration of their capacity to breed and 10 mo1her effec- tively. Women were thought, therefore, to stop developing intellectually at the onset of puberty when their constitutions became consumed with their repro- ductive functions.4 7

Women's intellectual deficiencies were compensated by capacities that were more highly developed in them than in men. According to de Varigny, in women it "was the occipital lobes [of the brain] which were the most developed ... and it is here that physiology locates the emotional and sensitive centres." Although women were intellectually weak they possessed greater se11sibili1e than men.48 And together with their heightened capaci1ies for feeling, they were believed to possess a "more irritable nervous system than men," hence the clain1S, across a number of discourses, for \\'Otnen's ''nervousness'' and "ex· citabiliiy:·49 Some commentators believed women had a larger visceral nerve expansion and hence were endowed with greater visceral feeling than men. Women thus experienced the world more directly through their senses, acting upon the impulse of the moment. Whereas European men's responses 10 sen- sory impulses were delayed, complex, and deliberate. the resull or cerebral re- flection, those of women, children, and "uncivilized races" were direct and im- mediate. Peripheral stimuli. in these groups, produced unmediated reactions. These groups shared a similar psychological makeup: they had sho11 concen1ra- tion spans; they were attracted indiscriminately by passing impressions; they

2AO Berthe Monsot ood lhe feminizing of lmp,ess,onism

were essentially imitative, their mental actions dependent on external stimuli: and they were highly emotional and impulsive. T heir strengths lay in their highly developed powers of observation and perception.50

One hears echoes of the art critics here. Theirs was obviously not a dis- course that was e laborated in isolat ion. Popular scientific theory of the late nineteenth century projected Woman as a person who was not quite in control. Hysteria was the extreme expression of the characteristics intri nsic ro all women (and certain men). Prey to her sensory impulses, Woman could become excessive, dangerous. Like color, she threatened to overspill her boundaries. to corrupt the rational order of dessinldessei11. She needed to be disciplined. con- trolled by rational forces.51 But she could not usurp that world of reason and make it her own. To do so would be to step o utside the natural boundaries on which o rder and civilization were based, to destroy sexual difference-that is, the fundamental binary opposition, masculine/feminine. self/other, on w hich c ulture is founded. In the sphere of art practice and criticism, it fo llows that it would be laughable, even unnatural, for women 10 absorb academic art theory. to aspire to la grande pei11111re or to ambitio us imaginative work. Such work called upon capacities that women did not possess. Their attempts could only amount to, at worst, crude pastiche. at best, ski 11 ful copying. Science had proved this and morality and social order demanded that it remain so.

Ben.he Morisot's position within this nexus of anxieties is fascinati ng. A woman, lauded for demonstrating women's most appreciable qualities in her art: ,;sparkling coquetries. gracious charm, and above all tender emotio n," she was also widely praised for the dignity of her person, her elegance, and her high breeding.52 A delicate balance is struck. In Morisot, women's innate q ualities are turned to the good. They are harnessed to a project that is seen as the fulfill- ment of her sex and as unthreatening to the social order. Her life. with its neces- sary domesticity. and her an, content to sing the praises of the surface, are ex- emplary. Only occasionally do we sense the fear that she will go over the edge, that she will live out her fem ininity too fully and become ill. One such instance was in 1883 w hen Joris-Karl Huysmans described Morisot's work as possessing '·a turbulence of agitated and tense nerves," suggesting that her sketches could perhaps be described as hysrerisees. S3

But for the most part critics i n the 1890s saw in Morisot's work the realiza- tio n of a well-adjusted fem ininity. Her painting gave stature and dignity to a way of perceiving different fro m men's. For a man to be an Impressionist in the 1890s would have been to relinquish his powers of reason, of abstraction. and of delib- erate thoug ht and planning. It would have led to an art that was weak, an "effemi- nate" art. But for a woman to be an Impressionist made sense. It was tantamoun t to a realization of self. In the words of Roger-Marx, Morisot's practice proceeded "according to the logic of sex, of temperament and of social class." Hers was "a precious art, ... which successfully employed the most vibrant and impression- able apparatuses of the organism. and a refined almost sickly sensibi lity, [which was) the hereditary privilege of the eternal feminine."54

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NOTES

l am grateful to Kathleen Adler, llriony Fer. Rasaad Jamie, and Paul Smi1h for !heir in- valuable co1nments on an earlier drafl of th is article. The first art hi~torians to co,nment critically on the conflation of Morisot's ··femininity" \Vith "Impressionism" ,vere Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, in Old Mistresses, Women, An anti lden/011.v (Lon- don, 198 1), 41-42. It was this worlc 1ha1 first s1imulated my imeres, in the issue and I gracefully acknowledge it.

1. Camille Mauclair, "Le Salon de 1896,'' la No111,elle revue I, May-June 1896. p. 342. 2. Mauclair supported a return 10 "abstract principles" so that ··realism .. '"'Ould be

tempered by "idealism:· For a discussion of these debates. see Richard Shiff, Cb.am,e and the £11tl nf /111pressio11is111, Chicago, l 984. pp. 70-98.

3. Of course. this construction of Impression.isl technique took no account of che ef .. fons artists 1nade to affect the appear.ince of spontaneity and imme<Uacy in cheir works. The aesthetics of the non fin,~ the sketchiness of the surfaces of so many lrnpressionist paintings, and the apparent infonnality of their compositional struc- turc..'lo allo,ved tJ1 etn to be re-ad as unn1ediated records of visual appearance. A study of the technique of an artist like Claude Monet reveals hO\v inadequate such an un- derstanding of ln1pressionis1n is. For suc:h a discussion. see John House. J\1onet: Nature into An, Nev.1 Haven, 1986.

4. Camille Mauclair, "Les Salons de 1896," p. 342. 5. Many articles on Moriso!"s retrospective exhibition held in March 1896 m Du-

rand-Ruel tnentioned lhc fact that her ,vork ,vas little k.no,vn at chis tin1e. See, for example, "L'Ocuvre de Benhe Moriso1,'' Moniteur des urts. no. 2227, 20 March 1896, p. 125. Mallannc also made this point in his preface 10 the catalogue: "Paris knew her little .. . ... S1cphane Mallannc. Berrhe Morisot (Mme Eugene Maner): 1841- /895, exh. cat., Durand-Ruel, Paris. 1896, p. 5. "Poor Madame Morisot. 1he public hardly knows her!" ,vrote Camille Pi~sarro co his son Lucien on the eve of her funeral on 6 March l 895. See John Rewald, ed., Camille Pis,arro: LP/Ires a sonfils Lucien, Paris, 1950. p. 37 l.

6. Georges Riviere. "L'Exposilion des impressionnistes." L 'fn1pres.rio1111iste, no. I. 6 April 1877, reprinted in Lionello Venturi. Les Archh·es de l'i1npressio1111is111e. Paris, 1939. p. 308.

7. The Fine Ans Museums of San Francisco and Naiional Gallery of Art. The New Paiminfl, exh. cat., Geneva. 1986. pp. 182. 328.

8. Albert Wolff, Le Figaro, 3 April l 876, quoted in Monique Angoulven1. Bathe M01'i.,01, Paris, 1933. p. 54.

9. Charles Bigot, la Revue polirique et litteraire, 8 April 1876, quoted in New Pai111- in11, p. 182.

10. Paul de Charry, le Pays. 10 April 1880. quo1ed in New Pai111i11g, p. 326. JI. Geol'ges RiviCre. L'bnpressionniste, 10 April 1877, quoted in l\'e•v Painting,

p. 240. 12. Edmond Durant)'. la Chronique des arts et de la <·uriositl. 19 April 1879, quoted

in Ne"4· Painting, p. 288.

242

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21.

Berthe M0<isot ond the Feminizing of fmpressionlsm

In 1877 Paul MantZ had already clairned that there was only one ··rea1 I n1pression- ist'' in the group. Berthe Morisol: "lier painling has all the frankness of an in1pro- visation: it does truly give the idea of an · in1pression · registered by a s incere eye and rendered again by a hand completely without trickery:· le Temps. 2 1 April 1877. quoted in Monique Angoulvcnt. Berthe Morisot. p. 56. At the same time Philippe Bu,ty wrote of her .. double privilege of being both a woman and an artist," invoking the eighteenth-century pastellisl Rosalba Carricra as her prede· ccssor in "'libe,ty and charm:· La Ripubliquefronrt1ise. 25 April 1877. reprinted in Venturi. Arclti,·es tie f'i,npres.fionnis,ne, pp. 291-292. Thoodor de Wyzcwa. "Berthe ~1orisot," in Peintres de jadi.i; et d'aujourd'hui, Paris, 1891, pp. 215-2 16. Gustave Geffroy. Berthe Morisot, exh. cat.. Boussod and Valadon, Paris, 1892, pp. 12- 13. Georges Leco1nle, Les l)eitures ;,npressionnistes, Paris. 1892. p. I 05. Claude Roger-J\otarx, .. Berthe Morisot." Revue eucylcopt,Jique. Paris. 1896. p. 250. This thesis was later expanded in his ' ·Les Femmes peintres et l'i1npressionnisnle," Gazette des Beaux-arts 38 (1907). pp. 491-507. In keeping with the construction of Morisot as "intuitive Impressionist" \vho docs not self.-consciously adopt a style or working 1nethod. contemporary cri1jcs rarely. i f ever, aHudc to changes or de- velopn1ents in her working practice. So. for example. lhc stylistic changes in her work in the early 1890s. such as her increased linearity. are not the subject of much discussion by her conte1nporaries. S. C. de Soissons [Charles Emmanuel de Savoie, comic de Carignan]. Boston Artists: A Pllrisia11 Critic's Note.<. Boston, 1894, pp. 7>-78. Ibid., p. 76. Roland Bnrthes. "Myth Today .. ( 1972). reprinted in Susan Sontag. ed .• Barthes. Oxford, 1982.p. Ill. For an appreciation of Morisot's works in these terms. see Gustave Geffroy. Berthe Morisot, 6. 10. Geffroy's commcnls paradoxically inscribe Morisot as attentive to Edouard Manet·s lessons and a~ an intuiti\'e. untutored painter: .. M,ne Berthe Mori sot. ,vho heard and onden,tood the good lesson in painting given during chjs pe- riod by Edouard Manet, has arrived totally naturnlly, by her love of things, to the de- velopment of the gift which is wnhin her:· Ibid .• p. 10. The construction of Morisot as the intuitive painter has been perperuated in the Morisot lileraturc. 1nost notably in the writings of Denis Rouart. who in l950declaimed: "IL is essential to hcrnature to be a painter and everything is a pretext for painting .•.. She could not stop paint· ing the people and the things she loved for with her to love was 10 paint. The way in ,vhich •she lives her painting and paints her life· gives her ,vork a special quality which Paul Valery has rightly compared ·to the diary of a woman who expresses herself by colour and drnwing. .... Denis Rouart, ,n Arts Council of Great Britain. Berthe Moris at. cxh. cat.. London, 1950, p. 5. Even a cursory reading of her letters compiled by Rouan himself. which indicate both Morisot"s s t.-uggle as an artist and her conscious identification ,vith certain painters and pl'actices. undennines the reading of hel' work as an intuitive outpouring. See Denis Rouatt. ed .. The Corre- spo,ulence of Benhe ,Woriso/, trans. by Betty W. Huhbard. introduction and notes by Katl,leen Adler and Tamar Garb. London, 1986.

TAMAR GARB 243

22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

Georges Lecomte, Les Pein/res i111pressionnfa·tes. p. 105. George Moore. "Sex in An;· Modem l'ai111i11g, London, 1898, p. 235. Claude Roger-Marx, Les l111pressim111istes. Paris. 1956, p. 39. Indeed, the compar- ison of Morisot's and Cassatt's styles in terms of what were thought of as intrinsic French and An1erican charactcristjcs had been around for sotne ti1ne. Not only were ostensible national character traits brought into play here, but an idea of a na- tional con~truction of "femininity .. had great currency at this time. For a compari- son of Morisot's and Cassa.n's ~·ork in these terms, see C. E., "Exposition des peintres indtpendants, .. La Chrnnique des llrts. no. 17. 23 April 1881. p. 134. for a discussion of the peculiaritie.-.; of French won,en as opposed to their Anglo- Sa;<on sisters who are described as excessively masculine. see Guscave Le Bon, ..La Psychologic des femmes ct les effets de leur tducation actuelle;· R,vue scie11- tifique 46. 11 October I 890. p. 45 l. S . C. de Soissons. Boston Artists. pp. 77-78. Raoul Sertat ... Berthe Morisot ... Journal des artisres, no. 23, 13 June 1892. p. 173. Theodore Duret, Maner and the bnpressionists. lrans. by J . E. Crawford Flitch, Philadelphia, 19 10, p. 173. Georges Lecomte. Les Pei111res itnpressionnistes. p. I 05. Claude Roger- Marx. Revue e11cyclopedi,1ue, p. 250. Stephane Mallarmc. Berthe Morisot, p. 5. For a discus.sion on the fear provoked by the femme 11ouvelle, see Debom Leah Sil- verman. Nature, Nobility and Neurology: The Ideological Origins of ·'Art Nou- ve,111" in Fra,u:e, 1889-1900. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1983. for a general dis.:ussion on the atmosphere of g loom and the fear of degeneration that obsessed intellectuals in this period, see Eugen \Vcber, France: Fin de Siicle. Cambridge, Mass .. 1986. George Moore, ··Sex in Art," p. 234. For another statement proclaiming Morisot the only ,vo111an to prove won1en's capacities in painting in the nineteenth century, see H. N., "Berthe Morisot," Joumal des artistes. no. 10. 10 March 1895, p. 955. For a broad overview of feminist campaigns and personaliljes in this period, see Jean Rabaut, Femi11istes a la bel/e-ipoq11,. Paris. 1985. For a discussion of the formation of the Union, sec Charloue Yeldham, lVomen Artists in 1Vine1een1/J- Ce11111ry France and £11gla11d, New York., 1984, vol. I, Pl>· 98- 1 O:I. For a contex- tual analysis of the formation of the Union, see Ta1nar Garb, "Re,•ising the Re,•i- sionists: The Formation of the Union des fen1n1es peintres et sculptcurs." Art Jour- 1wl 48. Spring 1989, pp. 63-70. For a discussion of the c-riticisn1 of 1he exhibitions, see Tamar Garb. '"L' Art ftrninin' : The fonnation of a Critic~I Category in Late Nineteenth-Century France," Art History 12, March 1989. pp. 39-65. The critic for the Monileur Jes art,t put it as follows: "Sistcr-in-Ja,v to Manet. it ,vas undel' his direction that she 1nade her first essays in painting. penetrating his ideas but not submitting to his influence and rendering her impressions in a lan- guage which is very n1uch her own: mode.."'il, ,vilhout working for a public but fol' herself, for the satisfaction of her artist's dreams. without care for fashion. without desire for fame." '·L'Oeuvre de Berthe Morisot." Mouiteur des arts. no. 2227, 30 March 1896, p. 125. For a representative example. see also Raoul Sertal, ··Mme

244 Berthe Monsot and the fem1naing of Impression.Sm

Benhe Moriso~·· Joumal ties artisres, no. 11, 15 March 1896. 1381. Morisot's femininity is seen to reside in her indifference to a public and the sale of her v.•orls; she is, therefore. sullably n1odcsl and withdnt\vn fro1n Lhc public sphere. Even the most cursory glance at her COl'respondcnce ,vith its many allusions to sales. dealers. and public exhibitions exposes the rnyth of such a constl'uction. The allusions are too numerous to itcn1ize. See RouaJ'l, Corresporulence, passim.

37. "L.Oeuvre de Berthe Morisot." p. 125. 38. The link with makeup wa, already made in the seventeenth century by Roger de

Piles. I am grateful to Katy Scott for her helpful comments in relation to the gen- dering of prc-nineLeenth-century academic theory.

39. Charles Blanc. Grammaire historique ties arts du dessin. Paris. 1867. p. 22. I am grateful to Jennifer Shaw for her discussions with me on this book. It is not sur· prising that S lane becanle hostile to hnprcssionisn1. regarding i1s realist enterprise a~ trivia). For his views on Impressionism. see Charles Blanc, Les Beaux.ans a I' exposi1io11 universe/le de 1878. Paris, I 878.

40. Charles Blanc. Grammaire hi<iorique. p. 23. 41. Ibid., p. 24. 42. For a discussion of the links between 1he discoveries of science and an antagonism

toward reminism, see Elizabeth Fee. "Nineteenth-Century Craniology: The Study of the Female Skull,"Bu//etin of tl,e Histo1y of Medici11e 53. Fall 1979, pp. 4 15-433.

43. For a representative account of this type, see Alfred Fouillte. \Voman: A Scie11tific Study anti l)efense. trans. by Rev. T. A . Seed, London. 1900, ba.scd on Fouillcc's TenJperameut et ,:aract~re selon Jes indiv;dus. les sexes et Jes races. Paris, 1895.

44. Robert A. Nye. Crime, Madness and Politics in ~1otlern France: TIJe Medical Concept of Nati01wl Decli11e, Princeton. 1984.

45. Henri de Varigny. "Femme;· in La Gra11de encyclopidie, vol. 17. Paris. 1892- 1893. p. 143. For a critical analysis of de Varigny's theories in the context of late ninetecnth· century medical and psychological studies on ,vonlen's intellec- tual capacities. see Jacques Lourbct. Le Probleme ties sexes. Paris, 1900. pp. 63-72.

46. A lfred FouillC-e. Woman, p. 48. 47. For a representative argunienl of this type, see Gas.ton Richard's re\'ie\\' of Jacques

Lourhet. Lt, fe1111ne tlevant la s,·ience conteniporaine, Paris, 1896. in Revue philo.,ophique 43, 1897, p. 435. See also Charles Turgeon. Le Ft111i11isme fr(Jllrais. Paris, 1907. p. 315.

48. Henri de Varigny, "Femme," 145. There were theorists who were reluctant to grant women a g reater sensibility than 1nen. Lo,nbroso, for exan1ple, distinguished between irritabiliti and sensibiliti, according the former to \\•omen, the latter to n1en.

49. P rof. M. Benedict. "La Question feminine," Rel'ue des m •ues. August 1895, p. 182.

50. The most ex1ren1e proponent or such views in France was the scientific populist Gustave Le Bon. who likened women's psychological makeup lo the uncontrolla- bility of a crowd. The qualities shared were:"in1pulsi"eness. irritability, incapacity to reason, the absences of judgement and of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of

TAMAR GARB 245

the senti1nents." Quoted in Susanna Barrows, Distorting ,Wirrors: Visiou.r of the Crolvd ;,, Ltue Nin.eteenth Century France, New Haven, 1981, p. 47. For a detailed discussion of his beliefs regarding the qualities intrinsic to ,vomcn and their con· comitant social roles, see Gustave Le Bon. "La Psychologie des femmes et Jes cf- fets de leur education actucllc." pp. 449-460. For a discussion of women·s and n1en's capacities in these terms. see the much·quo1ed fl . Can1pbell, Differences in rite Nervous Organisation of ,\1en and Won1en, London, 189 1.

51. In 1887 George J . Romanes compared women's emotions with men's. describing the forrner as "allnost al1,vays less under control of the ,vil1-more apl to break away. as it ,vere, from the restr.tin t of reason. and to overwheln1 the mental charioL in disaster." ··~tental Differences Bel\vecn ~ten and \Vo,nen:· 1Vi11eteenth Century 2 1, May 1887, p. 657.

52. These arc the quaJities identified by Gustave Le Bon as \\'on1en's great s trengths. They arc also the ones that frequently recur in the r.ttorisot criticism. Sec Le Bon. "La Psychologie des femmes," p. 451.

53. Quoted in Claude Roger-Marx. " Les Femmes peintres." p . 49<). 54. Ibid .. p. 508.