French impressionist painter Berthe Morisot was born Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot on this day January 14, 1841 in Bourges, Cher, France.
Though now widely recognized and admired for her creative merits, in her time, Morisot’s art was frequently described as full of “feminine charm” by her male contemporaries, a statement which Morisot noted as a frustration in a journal in 1890, writing “I don’t think there has ever been a man who treated a woman as an equal and that’s all I would have asked for, for I know I’m worth as much as they.” In 1894 Gustave Geffroy described Morisot as one of “les trois grandes dames” of Impressionism along with Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.
Morisot was a friend of painter Édouard Manet and married his brother Eugène Manet, who was also a painter. Berthe Morisot’s most famous paintings include The Cradle, View of Paris from the Trocadero, After Lunch, and Summer’s Day.
