From Library Journal
Higonnet describes Berthe Morisot as a sophisticated and accomplished woman living a life of bourgeois privilege and devoted to her art and her daughter, whose image she painted countless times. A skilled impressionist, she was the sister-in-law of Edouard Manet and the aunt of Paul Valery, and her list of friends and acquaintances reads like a Who's Who of 19th-century Paris. The author, who also wrote the biography Berthe Morisot (HarperCollins, 1991), documents the female and amateur artistic traditions that relate to Morisot's own beginnings. Morisot, like Mary Cassatt, painted from the female perspective, but both failed at painting the female nude. The footnoted text is nicely illustrated, mostly in black and white with a few color plates. The conclusion, however, is problematic because it discusses image, but not image as Morisot would have understood it. For 19th-century social history and women's studies collections.
- Ellen Bates, New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Ellen Bates, New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
