Routledge Research in Gender and Art

<p>This volume reframes French Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) in the history of art via a focus on the spaces and people that informed her work and thereby offers a new interpretation of Impressionism and of modernist aesthetics. </p><p>Claire Moran utilizes close visual analyses of artworks, in particular those of family, friends and domestic servants; textual analysis of Morisot’s journals and letters; investigation of late nineteenth-century advice manuals, magazines and advertisements in relation to Morisot’s life and work; examination of house floor plans and gardens; and the study of specific household objects that recur in her work and their history. This multi-pronged method of analysis, grounded in Morisot’s lived experience, allows a new understanding of Morisot’s art to emerge, one that will not only highlight the modernity of her aesthetics, but also question both public and critical assumptions about Impressionism. </p><p>The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, gender studies, French studies and history of design. </p>