2000.67.FA Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Berthe Morisot

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Pierre-Auguste Renoir only depicted his fellow Impressionist Berthe Morisot a few times during their long professional and personal relationship. This print, created after Morisot’s death, drew from an earlier pastel and oil painting that Renoir produced in 1894. The oil painting shows Morisot and her daughter Julie together on a couch, while the print focuses on Morisot’s face alone. Shown here as an older woman, the depiction of Morisot’s realistic age and austereness is unusual for its time. Morisot’s daughter criticized Renoir’s depiction, arguing that the artist “made her mother appear too harsh . . . when she was in reality very delicate.”

This image was originally intended to be the frontispiece for Morisot’s posthumous retrospective exhibition catalogue.

Adapted from

Amy Wojciechowski, DMA label copy, 2017.

NOTES

Created 1896

Catalogue essays

Foundation for the Arts

Artist/designers

Renoir, Pierre-Auguste (French, 1841-1919)

Cultures

Geography

Process/materials

Etching (printmaking)

Historical periods

Individuals

Berthe Morisot

Subject terms

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PROVENANCE

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WEB RESOURCES

National Museum of Women in the Arts~Read a biography of Berthe Morisot.
Art Institute of Chicago~View a self portrait of Berthe Morisot c. 1885.
Wikimedia Commons~Check out the painting on which Renoir based this etching.

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Apply to objects where number equals 2000.67.FA

General Description

Pierre-Auguste Renoir only depicted his fellow Impressionist Berthe Morisot a few times during their long professional and personal relationship. This print, created after Morisot’s death, drew from an earlier pastel and oil painting that Renoir produced in 1894. The oil painting shows Morisot and her daughter Julie together on a couch, while the print focuses on Morisot’s face alone. Shown here as an older woman, the depiction of Morisot’s realistic age and austereness is unusual for its time. Morisot’s daughter criticized Renoir’s depiction, arguing that the artist “made her mother appear too harsh . . . when she was in reality very delicate.”