CHAPTER IX · THE “WOMEN-PAINTERS”: BERTHE MORISOT, MARY CASSATT, MARIE RACQUEMOND, EVA GONZALÈS
“TOUTE TOILE QUI NE CONTIENT PAS UN TEMPÉRAMENT, EST UNE TOILE MORTE”
ZOLA
AMONGST the artists who contributed paintings to the eight exhibitions of the Impressionist group are four women, who were influenced by the new methods: Mdlle. Berthe Morisot, Madame Marie Bracquemond, Miss Mary Cassatt, and Mdlle. Eva Gonzalès.
The story of Berthe Morisot is romantic. She was the great grand-daughter of Fragonard, a famous beauty, a pupil of Manet, then the wife of his brother Eugène. Her position in the art world of France was unique, and her death at the early age of fifty in 1895 cut short a career devoted to a most charming and delicate style. She excelled above all in two branches of her art—an exquisite draughtsmanship and a most luminous and poetic sense of colour. Technical difficulties never discouraged her. She was one of those rare and fortunate individuals who can intuitively surmount any problem and consequently hardly require a teacher. Madame Eugène Manet was an artist to her finger-tips. Her work is charged with a feminine charm sympathetic to the temperament of any painter. Her canvases are iridescent poems in paint, and she possessed many qualities in common with her illustrious ancestor. “Only one woman created a style,” wrote the novelist George Moore (who, it may be remembered, had a close acquaintanceship with many of the Impressionists), “and that woman is Madame Morisot. Her pictures are the only pictures painted by a woman that could not be destroyed without creating a blank, a hiatus in the history of art.” She was a woman of great personality and charm, and took an active part in the furtherance of the movement which was initiated by her brother-in-law. “My sister-in-law would not have existed without me,” said Manet one day in the Rue d’Amsterdam to George Moore, and the latter adds, “True, indeed, that she would not have existed without him; and yet she has something that he has not—the charm of an exquisite feminine fancy, the charm of her sex. Madame Morisot is the eighteenth century quick with the nineteenth; she is in the nineteenth turning her eyes regretfully looking back on the eighteenth.”
Miss Mary Cassatt is an American subject. She was born at Pittsburg, studied at the Philadelphia Academy, and then, after some work with Degas, became an accomplished painter of children and the varied scenes of maternity. A pastellist of note, with Raffaëlli she succeeded in resuscitating the moribund art of etching in colour. Miss Cassatt’s work shows evidence upon every side of unwearying years of effort. Its dominant character is strength, and, with the single exception of Berthe Morisot, the artist is probably one of the most virile woman painters the world has seen. Strength is decidedly not the keynote of any of the works of Angelica Kauffmann, Madame Lebrun, or even of the many women who exhibit to-day, although they display other qualities worthy of praise. Miss Cassatt has experimented in numerous directions, has often tried to express herself in a fresh way. She has succeeded. Her draughtsmanship is exceptionally firm, and her colour bright, pure, and harmonious. She has worked in oil, charcoal, water-colour, pastel, and etching, and has remained faithful to the inspiration of her master Degas, and through him to the art of Japan.
The pastel drawing here reproduced is one of an extensive series devoted to scenes from maternal life. Although from the nature of things all such reproductions fall far short of the original, still a good idea is conveyed of technique and composition. Miss Mary Cassatt, it may be added, has travelled a great deal in search of subject inspiration, and is the friend of the older members of the original group of French Impressionists, to which she is allied by sympathy and the work of a lifetime.
Madame Marie Bracquemond was also an “Impressioniste,” and joined ardently in the movement. At first following the example of Ingres, her first teacher, she received the most valuable help from her husband, an engraver of the rarest talent. The field of her art ranges from a colossal decorative panel (those exhibited in the Paris Exhibition of 1878 were about twenty-one feet by nine feet in size) to a most delicate little etching. It may be understood that mere physical labour did not appal her, for the Exhibition panels required assiduous and heavy toil.
LE LEVER · BERTHE MORISOT
Of Eva Gonzalès there is, unfortunately, little to be said. At first taught by Chaplin, she became the favourite pupil of Edouard Manet, and commenced to display much talent as a pastellist. She married Henri Guérard, the engraver, but death ended at an untimely age a career of great promise. In the Luxembourg gallery she is represented by a pastel drawing.
It has been often said that in art women cannot create: they can only assimilate and reproduce. In one sense this is true both of Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, the two principal figures in this tiny feminine group. The first was profoundly influenced by her brother-in-law Manet, the second by her teacher Degas. Marie Bracquemond and Eva Gonzalès married husbands in the practice of their art.
But these women introduced into the stern methods of the early Impressionists a feminine gaiety and charm which were reflected upon the canvases of their “confrères,” and produced a certain change of attitude. There was little light-heartedness in the work of Manet before these women-painters joined the group, and it is not altogether improbable that some of the change is due to their example. In any body of men feminine influence always makes for the good, and these women, of strong but charming personality, must (it is idle to write any less emphatic word) have had a strong influence upon the whole group. Their industry was great, for they exhibited almost without intermission from 1874 to 1886. At times their talent touches genius, and for future historians they will prove an interesting study. Modernity is the note of Impressionism, and that movement was the very first artistic revolt in which women took a prominent part.
THE LAST RAYS · EMILE CLAUS