Home Return to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Printmaking page Artists Spaightwood Galleries Berthe Morisot (French, 1840-1895) Berthe Morisot was the organizing force behind the Impressionist group: she was the one who arranged all of their group exhibitions. A close friend of Manet and Renoir, she introduced them to the drypoint technique. With the renewal of interest in the women of the Impressioist group, Morisot's critical reputation has risen substantially, and one sign of that hass been a number of recent books and museum shows dedicated to her work and to her role as the organizer of the various Impressionist exhibitions during her lifetime. As the first two works below indicate, she also symbolizes the closeness of the Impressionists: She was Manet's sister-in-law and a close friend of Renoir, who not only made the portrait of her below but also several prints devoted to her daughter, Julie Manet, who is depicted in three versions of and in Ambroise Vollard Editeur: Prints, Books, Bronzes (NY: Museum of Modern Art, 1977), Una E. Johnson summarizes the state of current knowledge about Morisot's prints: Vollard acquired "approximately 12 drypoint" copperplates c. 1900. "Edition not noted but probably small; printed on fine wove paper; no wrapper; a few rare, early artist's proofs exist. Printer not known" (p. 137). She then provides a list of the 12 prints and their dimensions. On the basis of her titles, we list our holdings. According to Johnson, "the Vollard impressions reveal a slight puncturing of the plates a few mm. within the top and bottom center of the plate mark." Three of our impressions show those "puncturings"; the other two are impressions printed before the Vollard editions. In addition to the small editions published by Vollard, at least one of the prints was published in one of Duret's books on the French impressionists | |
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