Always the Model, Never the Artist

Left: Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with Bouquet of Violets, 1872; Right: photo of Berthe Morisot
"'It’s annoying they’re not men,' Édouard Manet wrote to fellow artist Henri Fantin-Latour, after meeting Berthe and Edma Morisot, two sisters from the Parisian upper crust who were promising painters. He found them 'charming' and feared that because they were women, their accomplishments would inevitably go to waste. Manet thought the Morisot sisters should 'further the cause of painting by marrying académiciens,' members of the jury who selected which works to display at the Académie des Beaux-Arts’s annual salon. The possibility that the Morisots might actually become artists did not seem to occur to him. Manet envisioned the Morisot sisters might make their mark in the annals of art as counselors to men in power—by influencing their tastes and sympathies, and convincing them of the worth of outsider artists (such as Manet himself). ..."
The Paris Review

Berthe Morisot, Hanging the Laundry out to Dry, 1875.

2010 January: Berthe Morisot, 2014 March: In Which Berthe Morisot Is Spared Nothing, 2015 March: In Which Berthe Morisot And Claude Monet Exchange Winter Letters, 2019 July: Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)