17 Jul 2019

Berthe Morisot, Woman Impressionist

Dallas Museum of Art

Reviewed by Tim McClure

Seventy-two canvases by Berthe Morisot, including many of her major works, overdue for full attention, are on view in a remarkable exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art. Following her initial involvement with the first Impressionist circle, Morisot developed a style owing something to Baroque painters. (Her grandfather was Fragonard.) They showcase her delight in applying paint to canvas via a confidently springy, delicate, and unerring touch. Because the need to maintain respectability kept her from experiencing Paris nightlife or cafes or brothels, the domicile became her milieu.

In Woman at her Toilette (1875-80), Morisot, doing more with gray than anyone since perhaps Velazquez, depicted her female subject not as a customary spectacle of objectification but as an actual self. Morisot's final phase, ended by her death from pneumonia at age fifty-four, presents selves who are more expressively colorful, sinuous, and confrontational, suggesting her likely awareness of the emergence of Munch and the Symbolists.