Berthe Morisot

Morisot could not enrol at the École des Beaux-Arts, which did not admit women, so she copied in the Louvre and studied privately with Corot. She took part in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874 and in every one thereafter but a single year, and critics who mocked the group often singled her out for praise while framing it as a compliment to her sex. She painted what she had access to: women reading, dressing, nursing, at a mirror or on a balcony — a domestic interior treated with exactly the seriousness the men gave to boulevards and racecourses.

She married Eugène Manet, brother of Édouard, and continued to work and exhibit; the household was a meeting point for Degas, Renoir and Mallarmé. She died of pneumonia at fifty-four, caught while nursing her daughter Julie, and her death certificate recorded her as having no profession. Julie, then sixteen, arranged the memorial exhibition the following year with Degas, Monet and Renoir hanging the pictures themselves. Morisot is buried in the Passy cemetery in the Manet family grave.