madamemorisot

[madamemorisot]

Edgar Degas picked up his ideas when a studentartist in the mid-1850s, and Manet is also thought to have been influenced by them in producing his Déjeuner sur Uherbe. The similarity between Boisbaudran's theories and the instruction given to them by Guichard on technique of memorization must have struck the Morisot sisters and it would undoubtedly have come into their conversation with Fantin, who enjoyed nothing better than artistic If, as seems likely, he repeated to Berthe and Edma much of what he told Whistler, they had food for thought. For Boisbaudran's students were taught to cultivate the memory by looking at real street scenes out of the window before reproducing them in the studio. And in the summer they were taken into the countryside on clear nights to observe the effects of moonlight: from a white cloth spread out on the grass they could study the different values of white in varying intensities of light.!

The hypothesis that Berthe was impressed by Boisbaudran's concepts is perfectly plausible.'? For all Guichard's lessons, it was Fantin in his quiet way who acted as an artistic informant and set the sisters” collaboration in motion. With his friend Legros, he set an example of an indefatigable artist, working in his cramped room in the rue Ferou. He reinforced all that Guichard had said about the Louvre. He gave hours to copying and recopying the Masters: before 1858 he had sold four of his copies of Veronese's Marriage Feast at Cana. For him the Louvre was a kind of community of learning. Like the best kind of university, it offered stimulus, motivation, the ambience and opportunity for improvement, leading ultimately to perfection.

Fantin was sadly preoccupied for much of 1859. One of his sisters had suffered a mental breakdown and his mother died that year. With the influx of summer residents, the Morisots stayed in Passy, knowing that the relative peace and seclusion were coming to an end. At midnight on 31 December 1859 the last remnants of the old walls and customs barriers came down; on 1 January 1860 Passy became absorbed into Paris. By that time Berthe and Edma had resumed their copying sessions at the Louvre with Guichard in attendance. They continued to work at their favourite Venetians. It was in the period 1860-1 that Berthe made her copies of Veronese's Calvary and The Feast at the House of Simon, which already carried hints of her freer interpretation.

Among the other copyists to be found in the Louvre at this time was a former student of the academic painter, Thomas Couture. A debonair, buckish 28-year-old, who had found the constraints of an academic studio too repressive for his taste, he worked with an obvious intensity and panache. While Berthe was copying her Veroneses in Guichard's presence, he was copying a Titian, The Virgin and the White Rabbit, and a Tintoretto self-portrait. She couldn't help but notice him. Nobody could. With his exquisite manners, well-cut clothes and fair, wavy hair and beard, he si out from the crowd. They exchanged glances and a few polite remarks was Fantin's friend, Edouard Manet.

#aboutmorisot

[madamemorisot]

The year 1875 saw Mary submitting to the Salon a painting generally called The Young Bride which was rejected on grounds of being too bright. The kick was a boost: tongue in cheek, Mary did “tone it down,” submitted it in 1876, and had it accepted. She was disgusted; and the cynicism of the young about society is as nothing to the cynicism of young artists for the art establishment. After submitting in 1877 to the Salon, and again being rejected, Mary shook the Salon's dust from her feet. Not that she felt herself a finished artist; on the contrary; 1875 was probably the vear in which her family persuaded her to study for a time at the atelier of the “Suave, luxurious” painter Charles Chaplin (rhymes in French with “Tapin”). From that experience survives a banal, academically painted nude.To have hung in the sacred Salon, and for five consecutive years, however, was a feather in any painter's cap; for an American, spectacular. Mary's disgust had to do with the formation of her own tastes; and her tastes were for a new style of art, being met in Paris more often with boos than with cheers. Its proponents, who also had revolted against the Salon, first exhibited as a group in 1874, under the name “La Société Anonyme des Artistes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc.,” and were called Impressionists, from a word used in contempt by one of the critics of Monet's Impresion: Sunrise. Toward them Mary was in an entirely receptive frame of mind; about her, they had already received those unwritten letters of introduction. On the aftemoon when a notvery-important artist, Toumy, played the important role of bringing Edgar Degas to call at Mary Cassatt's Paris studio they knew about each other. In fact, in one of his notebooks, Degas mentioned Mary Cassatt as a possible contributor to an exhibition before he even met her.

Before he left, Degas had invited Mary to exhibit with the new group. Years later Mary told how she felt: “I had already recognized who were my true masters. I admired Manet, Courbet, and Degas. I hated conventional art. I began to live.” Not to paint; she said to live. Thus was bom not only a new Impressionist, but a new relationship. Ambiguous and inscrutable in all its implications, it nonetheless strikes sparks wherever it is touched—of attraction, antagonism, afimity, stimulation, and a kind of love.

#mary cassatt

[madamemorisot]

Another enthusiasm of the two young women's, mentioned in the Havemeyer memoirs, was “Whistler—not . . . his works but . . . Whistler himself . . . The year after I bought my first Monet and my first Degas, I was passing the season in London with my mother and a friend of hers, and we visited an exhibition . . . It was the first time I saw Whistler's work and I cannot recall all the portraits or nocturnes he exhibited ... but... I was deeply impressed by the portrait Little Miss Alexander, which I believe was shown . . . for the first time. The picture created furore with the public and the critics [unfavorable] and also with me.” She wrote straight off to Whistler, asking to visit his studio, and when she arrived came to the point.

“I have thirty pounds to spend and, Mr. Whistler, oh indeed! [cried she, Victorian heroine] I should like something of yours.”

He stood and looked at me, and I looked at the white lock in his intensely black hair. “Why do you want something of mine?”

“Because I have seen your exhibition and—because Miss Cassatt likes your etchings.”

“Do you know Miss Cassatt?” he asked quickly.

“Indeed 1 do,” I answered. “She is my best friend and I owe it to her that I have a Pissarro, a Monet, and a Degas.”

“You have a Degas?” he asked looking at me curiously.

“Yes,” I said.

For her thirty pounds Whistler let her have five pastels which she treasured but which, as Mrs. Havemeyer, she eventually donated to the Freer Gallery in Washington.

Thus, in art's underground, Mary was aware of Degas and Whistler, and Whistler was aware of Mary. In 1874 Degas became aware of her too, with that remark about her portrait of Ida in the Salon (a painting which displays Mary's awareness of Courbet) to his companion Toumy: “C'est vrai. Voilá quelqu'un qui sent comme moi” Something unwritten had taken the place of letters of introduction, when these artists did physically mcet. They already knew each other's credentials.

Mary was becoming known back at home, too—whether she would admit it or not. Another young painter in her consciousness was the American John Singer Sargent who in 1874 began working at the École des Beaux Arts, later at the atelier of “Carolus,” as the students used to call Carolus Duran. Later Mary stopped being aware of Sargent, when she thought he had become vitiated by fashionable commissions, but at this time they were each aware of the other. In 1874, too, Mary sent to the National Academy of Design in New York the Offering the Pañal to the Bullfighter and Balcony in Seville which had been at the Salon. In the National Academy's catalogue for this show, Mary's address is listed as Rome, so she was still roving.

#mary cassatt

[madamemorisot]

But the two men had one advantage over the two women. Convention made for them to strike up friendships with other artists whom they met casually in the great gallery. One of Fantin's companions was the povertystricken Burgundian, Alphonse Legros, but he befriended others, such as an ebullient northerner calling himself Carolus Duran. Then in 1857 Fantin met Edouard Manet. They quickly became firm friends. And in the following autumn, when a figure in a large, wide-brimmed Rembrandt hat stopped to admire Fantin's copy of a Veronese, he soon struck up another warm friendship, with the Americanborn etcher and painter, James Whistler (who — and this point must have interested Fantin — had spent his childhood in St Petersburg). This casual association of artists with varied credentials intrigued Berthe and Edma, coming as they did from a closed and cosseted background. In addition to this, there was an unexpected link between Berthe Morisot and Fantin-Latour: By a remarkable coincidence (which they may not have realized immediatelty), they actually shared a birthay , 14 January .

Fantin's self-portraits show a pale face, stubby nose and a shock of wiry dark hair brushed back off his low forehead. Often there was an apprehensive expression in his eves; “timid” and “introspective” were the adjectives most often applied to him, But for all that, he was a bit of an enigma. Behind the shy and serious exterior was a likeable man to whom people gravitated and in whom they seemed willing to confide. He was a mine of personal information and for a few years he was the go-between, the inveterate gossip of his circle.?

Fantin bent the ear of many a Louvrist with his enthusiasms. He and Whistler sat in bars like the Café Moliere talking endlessly about art. Some of this percolated through to Berthe and Edma. Whistler learned from Fantin the technique of using the bottom of a picture frame or a mirror as background for a genre painting, to give it a sense of structure.!* Berthe picked up the same device, using it, for instance, in her well-known double portrait of The Artist's Mother and Sister. Fantin also seems to have told Berthe and Edma about the radical concepts of his former teacher, Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Only a few months earlier he had introduced these theories to Whistler; and in 1858 they had received fresh praise and publicity with the publication of an article in L'Artiste by the architect Viollet-le-Duc. Lecoq de Boisbaudran was a professor at the Ecole Impériale et Spéciale de Dessin — some say the greatest teacher of draughtsmanship of the century. He had evolved a method of systematic memorization which made it pe traditional, classical subject matter and the modernity of present-day settings. His theories were widely disseminated after 1847 through his book, Training in Visual Memory. He acquired a number of enthusiastic pupils and advocates, including Rodin, Tissot, Legros and Fantin.

#aboutmorisot

[madamemorisot]

However proud Cassatt was of earning this form of oficial recognition, she did not relax her critical perception of the Paris art world. She had always shied away from political jockeying, even on the student level, but now, after spending a considerable amount of time studying the old masters and meeting contemporary artists in Italy and Spain, she could view the modern French school from a broader perspective. She had mer French artists studying in Spain and knew that the cool tonalities of Velásquez were in vogue in current French painting. When she saw what such important artists as Léon Bonmat did with Velásquez's style, she felt that something akin to an artistic crime had been committed. She, who had just come from direct contact with the Velásquez masterpieces in the Prado, had been trying to incorporate their realism and solidity into her own work. In comparison she condemned the French school as it was displayed that year in the Salon as “washy, unfleshlike, and grey.” The stunning presumption of this twenty-nine-year-old, who had spent only six months of her life ín Spain, to take on the entire French establishment for its inaccurate reading of Velásquez was not lost on the people around her. Once again, Sartain was in awe of her friend, “she is entirely too slashing, snubs all modern art, disdains the Salon pictures of Cabanel, Bonnat, and all the names we are used to revere ".

Cassatt's opinions, as idiosyncratic as they were, were not unique in Paris. Through the many European and American connections she had, she was soon in touch with others who were also critics of the status quo. The most famous of these were the radical artists who organized their own exhibition in 1874 and became known as Impressionists. Some friends of Cassatt had met Monet and Renoir during their student days in the early 1860s. We have no proof that she had met them, nor do we have any evidence that she was acquainted with Berthe and Edma Morisot, who had been copying in the Louvre during the years Cassatt was similarly occupied. We do know that in 1873 Cassatt painted a small profile head of Mme. Sisley, presumably the wife of the future Impressionist Alfred Sisley. Cassatt's relationship with these artists was undoubtedly slight, but her establishing contacts with a range of artists within the dissident community during this time had momentous repercussions for her future.

#mary cassatt

[madamemorisot]

Cassatt had good reason for wanting her real name to be published in the Salon catalog at last. The first two times she had paintings accepted, the jury was thought to be exceptionally lenient. In 1868 Cassatt and Haldeman knew that newcomers were given extra consideration. In 1869 they were refused when the jury decided to make severer cuts. In 1870 the pendulum swung back to leniency under the leadership of the free-thinking battle painter, Ernest Meissonier. Called the “democratic” Salon, nearly three thousand paintings were accepted and hung without regard to importance or a pleasing arrangement, but in rows, alphabetically by artist.” While it was always good to have a painting in the Salon, acceptance into the Salons of 1868 or 1870 was not the honor it might have been. In 1872, when the Salons resumed after the break caused by the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, the jury was anxious to reinstate rigorous standards and refused more than half of the entries. The same was true in 1873 and would remain in force for several years to come. Not only was the number of Americansin the exhibition down from prewar levels, but during these years the radicalFrench artists around Manet, including Renoir and Pissarro, were unexpectedly humiliated by rejection and began to form plans for alternate exhibitions. In light of the large numbers of artists whose work was not accepted, Cassatt thought more highly of getting in. In fact, she may have regretted staying in Parma for the 1872 Salon and made the trip from Seville especially for the exhibition in 1873.

#mary cassatt

[madamemorisot]

Berthe and Edma were naturally curious about Fantin-Latour and Bracquemond. Up to this time their experience of the male sex was confined to father figures: to their Papa and Grandpire Thomas, to Aimé Millet, who was their mother's age, Guichard, who was precisely their father's contemporary, and the dreaded Chocarne, who had been born in the eighteenth century! Their interest was aroused partly because these two men were young — not unimportant when two young women had reached a marriageable age. Fantin was fascinated by the two attractive female artists, and over time he developed a secret passion for Edma, whose quiet personality did not intimidate him. And for Berthe and Edma it was intriguing to meet a pair of dedicated male artists, struggling to establish themselves in a hard commercial world. The sisters knew as well as the men that the best route to a successful career lay through the Salon, organized by the Institut de France. For the first time, Fantin was preparing to submit three paintings to the Salon jury, a selfportrait and two domestic scenes figuring his sisters. On these might depend his whole future. It was a sensitive time.

Neither he nor Bracquemond was born into privilege. In Fanun s case, he might have seemed favoured: his mother was the adopted daughter of a Russian countess. But his father was a plain drawing teacher and portrait painter in Grenoble, and in 1854 Fantin had fallen at the first hurdle of the race for artistic success by failing in the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Normally a student moved from the école to the studio of an eminent academician and influence in respect to success came partly by flattering the maitre to use his the prestigious Prix de Rome. After triumphing in the competition, it was a matter of submitting works to the Salon, winning a medal and waiting for the commissions to flow. Wealth, fame, recognition would surely follow... But not for Fantin or Bracquemond, who were already outside this mainstream of the art establishment. Nor necessarily for Berthe and Edma Morisot. They were hampered (if not excluded) by their sex. Without a prestigious studio behind them (or even the humbler Académie Suisse), their only resources were the copying facilities at the Louvre.

#aboutmorisot

[madamemorisot]

Félix Bracquemond was twentysix years old at the time, darkly bearded, a stocky man with honest, wideset eyes. He was a complex personality: he could be arrogant, dogmatic, fiery, yet extremely charming. He was also multi -talented and became a central figure in the Parisian art scene. From his youth, when he was an assistant to a professional lithographer, he developed into a firstrate draughtsman, a talent he put to use as both a print-maker and a ceramist. While Berthe and Edma were still at school he had worked alongside Charles Méryon, a brilliant but much undervalued etcher, who was trying to resurrect this neglected art form. Bracquemond's interest in etchings grew into an ambition to exploit the market with fine prints (belles épreuves) and he was to be co-founder of the Society of Etchers. Later his career took a different direction when he became artistic director of the Haviland Porcelain Works. But at this time — the late 1850s — he lived by taking small commissions, such as the frontispieces of books. He decorated some works of the novelist Champfleury, and through him came to know a number of the pro-Realist critics and writers in Paris. At this time his friends included the Goncourt brothers, Gavarni, Alphonse Legros, Millet, Corot and Edouard Manet, as well as Fantin-Latour, who remained a close friend all his life through whom  he would shortly meet Edgar Degas .Although he was a working artist, Bracquemond still found time to visit the Louvre. He shared with Fantin (who was three years his junior) a love of Delacroix, Courbet and the seventeenth-century Spanish and Dutch masters. But he was one of the first artists in France to be seduced by oriental art. From the moment in 1856 when he came across some Hokusai rejects in Delátre's bookshop in the rue Saint-Jacques, he was inspired by the fine draughtsmanship and unusual composition of Japanese prints and woodcuts. He admired the landscape design and colour of Hokusai and Hiroshige, and the realism of earlier masters like Utamaro, whose prints of everyday life were “mirrors of the passing world”. Suggestiveness, the lack of irrelevant detail, the fresh combination of colour, eve appeal — all these qualities anticipated the future direction of French art: Impressionism.

Japonisme grew in popularity after 1862 with the opening of a specialist business in the rue de Rivoli. Bracquemond, Fantin and their friends, Whistler, Manet, Degas, Stevens and James Tissot, became voluble exponents of the compositional techniques of oriental art. With certain literary critics — Baudelaire, Zacharie Astruc, Philippe Burty, Emile Zola and the Goncourts - they were patrons of the shop known paradoxically as La Porte Chinoise. Berthe caught hints of this new exotica. She learned about the artistic implications in the course of the 1860s, noting that “only Manet and the Japanese can indicate a mouth, eyes, a nose with a single stroke of the brush, so concisely that the rest of the face models itself. However, similar remarks were to be made of her work, suggesting that she too had these eclectic tendencies

#felix bracquemond

[madamemorisot]

Guichard was an unvitting accomplice to the plot. Apart from watching over their artistic development, he did them an important service. Some time in the winter of 18589, during one of their copying sessions, he introduced them to a young etcher-engraver called Félix Bracquemond. As a result of this meeting, Bracquemond presented Berthe and Edma to his friend Henri Fantin-Latour on another occasion when they were working in the Louvre. It was as if a door had opened. Beyond lay an expanse of fertile conversations and stimulating relationships. In the months to come, Berthe and Edma found themselves latching on to the ideas floated by a group of artists of their own generation. And it was all very proper. Even Cornélie Morisot's watchful eye and ear detected nothing untoward in these polite discussions on the subject of art.

#aboutmorisot

[madamemorisot]

A new aesthetic medium took hold in France in the 1850s, symbolized by the formation in 1864 of the Société Francaise de Photographie. Photography had novelty, speed and realism. It soon became a vogue, an alternative to engravings or oil paintings. The two leading exponents of the art, Etienne Carjat and Félix Tournachon — better known as Nadar — had been caricaturists before turning their hands to photographic portraiture. But they quickly discovered that their portraits were in demand from the acquisitive bourgeoisie.

When Berthe was about eighteen, the Morisots arranged for her to have a photographic portrait. lt reveals an attractive young woman with neat, regular features, whose full face still has the rounded cheeks of youth. A halo of dark hair and two chubby ringlets frame her face and neck. She stands nonchalantly by an armchair, gazing ahead, confidently eyeing the viewer who eyes her. Her day dress is a chic gown, mid-toned in a heaw, shot fabric, with softly sloping shoulders and a crinoline skirt, nipped at the waist. The buttoned bodice fits snugly to her well-rounded bust. The sleeves are generous, sheered below the elbow. White cambric cuffs and collarsoften the wrist and neckline, while a black l ace jabot picks up the striking  braided chevrons of the sleeves.

The Morisot sisters were lucky in their looks. They were dainty but shapely in build, with a number of appealing features. Yves was a natural blonde, a colouring that had become fashionable since the arrival of Empress Eugénie. Despite her stubborn jawline, Yves Morisot was compellingly pretty and capable of turning heads. Her slightly wistful, finely moulded face was perfectly offset by her golden curls. In colouring, as in age, Edma was between her sisters. She had blonde tints to her light brown hair, delicate features and a small, oval face, with a strong look of her father, especially across the eyes. Berthe, who claimed to resemble her grandmother Thomas in appearance, was the darkest of the three. Her eyes “were almost too large, and so powerfully dark” with “a deep magnetic force -.. black instead of green which they really were". Being critical, Théodore Duret observed that her features lacked regularity and her complexion brilliance, but he conceded her grace and distinction and agreed she had the typical colouring and vibraney of a French beauty? 

#aboutmorisot

[madamemorisot]

Their hard work of the fall caused Cassatt and Haldeman to advance to the forefront of Chaplin's class. They then decided to leave the artificial environment of the classroom for the “real world” of the countryside. In February 1867 they took up residence in the village of Courances, not far from Barbizon and the or Forest, where they could engage actual villagers as models and paint them in their natural setting. They went to Paris regularly. Haldeman and probably Cassatt kept lodgings there. While in Paris they showed their work to Chaplin and received advice. Chaplin was encouraging and they were pleased with their progress, feeling that they were learning mpre in Courances than they could in Paris.

The courtly manners of the poor in Europe were in sharp contrast to the straightforward “democratic” manners of the working classes in the United States. In travel literature of the time, this became one of the most remarked differences between the two cultures.'* To American artists like Cassatt and Haldeman this difference made European peasants interesting and picturesque, and one of their primary aims in painting them was to capture the effect of noble simplicity. They began painting the villagers at once and soon developed ideas for major pictures that they could show to Chaplin. Not only did he approve of their work, but he encouraged them to finish their paíntings in time to submit them to that vear's Salon, Although neither painting is known to have survived, they apparently depicted village children posed in one of the romantic peasant cottages. Although the children “tease us nearly to death, sing, dance, and cut up all sorts of capers,”  in quieter moments the two artists found contentment as they painted while being“entertained with the music of a spinning wheel “and the ticking of a clock”*

#mary cassatt

[madamemorisot]

It is a measure of Cassatt's skill at this time that she was accepted by one of the most sought after teachers in Paris, Jean-Léon Géróme . Géróme, a younger master, was considered to be one of the most talented draftsmen of his generation and represented a new wave of realist precision of detail applied to exotic and historic subjects. Her friends back home in Philadelphia, who knew Géróme only by reputation, were stunned. When Thomas Eakins  began studying with Géróme later that year, he was bombarded with letters from such friends demanding details about Mary Cassatt's great coup. To their mutual friend Emily Sartain he wrote that he did not know much about it, but “from what I know of Géróme I think the whole story extremely probable”! and later another astonished friend, Charles Fussell, wrote back to Eakins asking for all the details of “how Miss Cassatt was honored by Géróme's private lessons.”

Aside from her lessons with Géróme, Cassatt plunged into the other round of activities that filled the days of Parisian art students. She very quickly obtained a permit to copy paintings in the Louvre, and began to spend a good part of every day there. If contemporary drawings and prints of the galleries of the Louvre are reliable, the corridors were filled with a thicket of easels clustered around the more popular paintings . Most of the easels belonged to art students who were copying as a means of studying the techniques of color, brushwork, and composition of the old masters. Others in the crowd would turn their copies into something more than an exercise. As professional copyists, they took orders primarily from tourists for copies of famous paintings in the Louvre and made a respectable amount of money for their efforts. In the years immediately after the Civil War, American tourists constituted a major market for such copies. Elizabeth Gardner, for instance, very quickly became proficient enough to subsidize her education by executing copies for clients. Even Cassatt later carned money in this way.

In the period from 1865 to 1870, when Cassatt haunted these corridors as a student, she was joined by such American friends as Eliza Haldeman, Howard Roberts, Thomas Eakins, William Sartain, Henry Bacon, Frederick Bridgman, Howard Helmick, Elizabeth Gardner, and Imogene Robinson. Of the French artists of importance to Cassatt, one finds listed in the cop: register the names of Jenny Sisley, Edgar Degas, Eugene Delacroix, Louise  Abbéma, Pierre Cabanel, Paul Cézanne, Berthe and Edma Morisot, and Mme. Joseph  Tourny. This international group did not necessarily mix, and letters indicate that the French and American women were particularly cool toward each other. For those who did know one another, the Louvre was unquestionably the social center of the young cliques in Paris.

#mary cassatt

[madamemorisot]

Renoir went to Carry-Lerouet near Martigues with his young pupil Jeanne Baudot and her parents, and he urged Berthe Morisot to join him:

“My dear friend, the weather is fine, cool in the morning and in the evening. There is a comfortable room in this hotel. I don't know about the food; last year they told me that it was 6.50 a day; this year it is 7 francs, but I think that I shall obtain a small reduction for two . . . Stay at the hotel Terminus in Marseille; reserve a room on the third floor from Paris —8 franes for one with two beds, very clean, lunch 3 frances. To get to Carry take a boat near Marseille at 9 in the morning, arriving at Carry at 10-30; there is also an old coach leaving Marseille at 3 and arriving at Carry at 6-30. The carriage is at Number 5, Rue de l'Arbre. Regards.

“PS. — Room at the Terminus: third floor at 4 and 5 francs; with two beds, 6 and 8 frances.”

On February 10 he wrote:

“My dear friend, it is understood that if you come I shall leave the cháteau for the simple inn with you. I have made sure that there is a fireplace in that inn, and if necessary there will be a fire. The weather has turned bad since yesterday.

“I found my view of the sea as beautiful as ever, but one misses the sun. We had snow all the way from Paris to Tarascon, and the cold was terrible; the frost on the window panes did not thaw, and so our joy was great when we arrived at Marseille in delightfully warm weather. In bad weather like today's it is very ugly. Provence needs the sun. Regards.”

And the next day he sent another pencilled card with these simple words:

“Warm and fine today.”

But Berthe could not join Renoir in the south that she loved. She was unduly alarmed about her daughter's grippe. She feared that it was the beginning of typhoid fever, and then she caught it herself. Her condition became complicated with pneumonia which carried her off in a few days. On February 27 she sent this pencilled note to Mallarmé:

“I am ill, my dear friend, I do not ask you to come because it is impossible for me to speak.”

#berthe morisot #pierre auguste renoir

[madamemorisot]

Berthe had invited Renoir to come to Brittany, but he wrote:

“It is my fate that each time you have everything to make me welcome and delight me, circumstances prevent me from taking advantage of it. This year I cannot go too far away, and I am going to Trouville for a little while only because it is no more than four hours from Paris; nevertheless it is possible that toward the end of September, if you have not left Portrieux, I may be able to come to greet you before surrendering definitively to my furnace. Since I saw you I have had several shocks. Pierre was again pretty sick, and I was obliged to leave suddenly for Burgundy where he was with his mother. Fortunately everything turned out to be all right, and I escaped with a good scare.“I am truly distressed at not being able to accept your invitation. I might have worked, but I have wasted my summer; let's say no more about it. I imagine that all of you are well since you have not mentioned anyone's health. Moreover Brittany is quite pleasant, not as rainy as Normandy. Unfortunately it is rather far away — fortunately so, because otherwise it would be crowded with dreadful people.“And so, enjoy yourself; bring back some of those lovely sea views, which are so beautiful in Brittany, with the water clear all the way to the edge, and white-clad Julies against a background of golden isles. What a sentence! I have written it just to tease Mallarmé. Regards to sweet Julie, and the best of health to all of vou.”

#berthe morisot #pierre auguste renoir

[madamemorisot]

On January 12 Renoir wrote her the following note:

“Having received your letter this moming only, although it came last night, I could not avail myself of your kind invitation. I had and still have the grippe; last night everyone was asleep by nine o'clock.

“The weather is improving, spring is coming with great strides. Oh poetry! I shall therefore see this enchanting poet another time.

“Since rose-fingered dawn now rises a little earlier, it will perhaps be possible to paint.”

On March 31 she received the following note from Renoir:

“Next Wednesday Mallarmé will give me the pleasure of coming to dinner at Montmartre, If the climb in the evening is not too arduous for you, I thought that he would like to meet you there. Durand-Ruel will come, and Iam going to write to the above-mentioned poet to invite Régnier for me.

“P.S. I am not mentioning sweet and lovable Julie: that is of course taken for granted, and I think that Mallarmé will bring his daughter. I wanted to invite Degas; I confess that I don't dare.”

#pierre auguste renoir #berthe morisot

[madamemorisot]

Back in Paris she wrote to Mallarmé:

“1.04 is the correct time; at least I was told so at the station, and I was triumphant; but we did not leave at that time, nor even at 1.15, and the express trains passed by without stopping. After all, I think you were right, or rather that I don't understand a thing.

“It was a great disappointment to be back in Paris to which one becomes attached in the long run, by force of habit, whereas even the shortest stay in Valvins makes you hate to leave it.“Laertes was so tired last night that he crept into my suitcase and made himself a nest among the frills of your neighbour whom I admired so much. And this morning we feel so exiled not to be there with all of you that it is impossible to resist sending you a greeting and a little gossip, intended more for the ladies than for the poet.”

Mallarmé wrote in reply:

“Everything has changed, even the wind, since your departure; the boat lies sleeping under the threat of rain. I am working without knowing too well on what, and am writing this on the side. Your stay here brought us a great pleasure —the feeling that I was taking walks with a dear friend in our neighbourhood; and only now do I realize how charming they were; while you were here everything seemed so natural.

“I know that you are dealing courageously with your troubles; how is Julie's finger ([ am being asked about it), and when will you leave for the Limousin with your timetable? My wife has a little cough, Genevieve remembers a chatty and very special Julie in the woods; as for myself, I thought that she had a round and rosy face when she left.

“To look at the painting of the little sailboat is very satisfying.

“Thank you for your note. My best to both of you. Also to good Laertes, as Hamlet called him.”

#berthe morisot

[madamemorisot]

On August 21 Berthe wrote in reply:

“No, nothing serious, my dear friend, simply a painfully infected finger. With the hot weather doing its share, she had several days of fever and sleeplessness. On Monday the doctor will tell me whether we may leave, and then I shall let you know.

“I think that the inn will be empty; the “viper hunters” who stayed there have returned to Paris. You see that I am well informed.

“Best regards.”

A little later she wrote him:

“Thank you for the trouble you took on our behalf; we shall arrive on Thursday by a morning train.”

#berthe morisot