Berthe Morisot Quotes

Music and painting should never be literary, a very subtle distinction according to Renoir. As soon as I try to represent an individual, their physiognomy and attitudes, I become a literary artist.

Another stroll along the quays with Julie asking questions all the time. We stood for a long time examining the sun and the planet at a mapmaker's.. ..There in the Tuileries Gardens.. ..sitting down I began to ponder over my painting of the garden, watching the shadows on the sand and on the roof of the Louvre, and trying to find the relationship between light and shade. Julie saw pink in the light and purple in the shadows.

..scumbled froth.. ..capable of indicating a mouth, eyes, a nose with a single stroke of the brush, the rest of the face modeled by the perfect accuracy of these indications.

There is constant sun, good weather all the time, the ocean like a slab of slate - there is nothing less picturesque than this combination.

This painting, this work you miss so much [the two sisters Morisot painted a lot together] is a cause of much trouble and concern, you know this as well as I do and yet, child that you are, you are already weeping for the loss of the very thing that darkened you mood only recently. Think of it, yours is not the very worst lot: you have a real affection, a devoted heart that is yours an yours alone, do not be ungrateful for the dealings of fate, think of the great sorrow that is solitude; whatever anyone says or does, womankind has immense need of affection; to want to retreat into yourself is to attempt the impossible.

Would you do us the great favour, you and Mademoiselle Geneviève, of coming to dine next Thursday? Monet will be there, Renoir also..

I say, 'I should like to die', but that's not true at all, I should like to get younger.. ..youth and old age are similar in more ways than one, and they are the two moments in life when one can feel one's own soul which would be a proof that it exists.

It seems to me a painting [she is working on] like the one I gave Manet ['The Harbour at Lorient'] could perhaps sell, and that is all I care about.

He [ Manet ] begged me to go straight up and see his painting [ 'Le Balcon'] - Berthe was model for this painting], as he was rooted to the spot. I've never seen anyone in such a state, one minute he was laughing, the next insisting his picture was dreadful; in the next breath, sure it would be a huge success.

I have heard so much about the perils ahead that I have had nightmares for several nights, in which I lived through all the horrors of war.. .The militia are quartered in the studio, hence there is no way of using it. I do not read the newspapers much any more; one a day is enough for me. The Prussian atrocities upset me, and I want to retain my composure.. .Would you believe that I am accustomed to the sound of the canon [of the Prussians]? It seems to me that I am now absolutely inured to war and capable of enduring everything.

I am keen to earn some money.. ..beginning to lose all hope.. .What I see most clearly is that my situation in impossible from every point of view.

My work is going badly.. ..it is always the same story: I don't know where to start. I made an attempt in a field, but the moment I had set up my easel more than fifty boys and girls were swarming about me, shouting and gesticulating. On a boat one has another kind of difficulty. Everything sways, there is an infernal lap of water; one has the sun and the wind to cope with; the boats change position every minute, etc.. .The view from my window is pretty to look at, but not to paint. Views from above are almost always incomprehensible; as a result of all this I am not doing much..

The touch, sure and light [is] fixing something of the passing moment.. ..memory is the true, imperishable life, that which has sunk without trace and been forgotten was not worth experiencing, the sweet hours, and the great and dread, are immutable. Dreams are life itself – and dreams are more true than reality; in them we behave as our true selves – if we have a soul it is there.

If you read some of the Parisian newspapers, among others the 'Figaro', so beloved of the right-thinking public, you must have learned that I am part of a group of artists who opened a private exhibition [in the art-gallery of Durand-Ruel in Paris, April 1876]. You must also have seen what favour this exhibition enjoys in the eyes of these gentlemen [Berthe refers to the critical articles in Paris with all their mockery about her works]. On the other hand, we have been praised in the radical newspaper, but you don't read those [her aunts]! Well, at least we are getting attention, and we have enough self-esteem not to care. My brother-in-law Edouard Manet is not with us [Manet didn't participate in this first Impressionist show, initiated by Degas ]. Speaking of success, he [Manet] has just been rejected by the Salon; he, too, is perfectly good-humored about his failure.

I have descended to the depths of suffering, and it seems to me that after that one cannot help being raised up. But I have spent the last three nights weeping. Pity! Pity! Remembrance is the true imperishable life.. .I should like to live my life over again, to record it, to admit my weaknesses; no, this is useless; I have sinned, I have suffered, I have atoned for it. I could write only a bad novel by relating what has been related a thousand times.