The symbolist portraiture of Berthe Morisot (France)

This dissertation presents a study of Berthe Morisot's portraiture within the context of late nineteenth-century French culture. Focusing upon specific works executed in the second half of her career (1880--1895), this study takes as an essential premise Morisot's ardent embrace of the genre of portraiture as a means to express the widest possible compass of her ideas on art. In her late portraits Morisot responded to new ideas about individual personality and human identity advanced in the writings of biologists, physiologists, and psychologists during the nineteenth century. In doing so she expanded the boundaries of portraiture, the genre of painting most sensitive to changes in notions of personal identity. Morisot demonstrated for her contemporaries the singular potential of the painted portrait as a medium for the expression of the sublime depth and complexity of human nature.; Focusing upon representations of women and children (infants, children, and adolescents) this study treats the themes of kinship, friendship, nature and the natural, music, and dreams presented by the artist. This dissertation also examines how Morisot revived and reformed select subjects and motifs of French Rococo and Romantic art for modernity and responded to the Symbolist aesthetic of seeking universal meaning within the circumstances of the everyday, mundane world.; Often overlooked in recent considerations of Morisot and her art is the extent to which she transformed her practice of painting in the decades following the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886. Invigorated by new professional opportunities and associations, inspired by new friendships and progressive ideas about art connected directly to her meditations on Symbolist aesthetics, Morisot produced paintings in the second half of her career that were entirely different from the works for which she has been best remembered. One of the central objectives of this study is to restore Morisot's legitimate place of leadership within the Parisian avant-garde and to demonstrate the extent to which her ideas were respected and her art valued by her peers. To understand Morisot's achievements she must be accepted as an intellectual---an associate mover of new ideas and ideals in late nineteenth-century French art.