The Cradle

Exactly 175 years ago Berthe Morisot, one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism was born. In 1864, she exhibited for the first time in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris. Sponsored by the government, and judged by Academicians, the Salon was the official, annual exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris. Her work was selected for exhibition in six subsequent Salons until, in 1874, she joined the "rejected" Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. She was married to Eugène Manet, the brother of her friend and colleague Édouard Manet. Morisot’s works are almost always small in scale. She worked in oil paint, watercolors, or pastel, and sketched using various drawing media. Around 1880 she began painting on unprimed canvases - a technique Manet and Eva Gonzalès also experimented with at the time - and her brushwork became looser. In 1888–89, her brushstrokes transitioned from short, rapid strokes to long, sinuous ones that define form. The outer edges of her paintings were often left unfinished, allowing the canvas to show through and increasing the sense of spontaneity. After 1885, she worked mostly from preliminary drawings before beginning her oil paintings. Morisot creates a sense of space and depth through the use of color. Although her color palette was somewhat limited, her fellow impressionists regarded her as a "virtuoso colorist". She typically made expansive use of white, whether used as a pure white or mixed with other colors. Morisot painted what she experienced on a daily basis. Her paintings reflect the 19th-century cultural restrictions of her class and gender. She avoided urban and street scenes and seldom painted the nude figure. Like her fellow Impressionist Mary Cassatt, she focused on domestic life and portraits in which she could use family and personal friends as models, including her daughter Julie. Prior to the 1860s, Morisot painted subjects in line with the Barbizon school before turning to scenes of contemporary femininity. Paintings like today's The Cradle, in which she depicted current trends for nursery furniture, reflect her sensitivity to fashion and advertising, both of which would have been apparent to her female audience. Her works also include landscapes, portraits, garden settings and boating scenes. Later in her career Morisot worked with more ambitious themes, such as nudes. Corresponding with Morisot's interest in nude subjects, Morisot also began to focus more on preliminary drawings, completing many drypoints, charcoal, and color pencil drawings -- Since 2012 every day we present one new piece of art to more than 300.000 people all around the world. Now we ask for your help - we want to create new version of DailyArt but we need $15000 to make it happen. On this website you will find the details and help us with a donation: http://support.getdailyart.com. Thank you!