Musée No:397.037

Musée No:397.037

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The Artist's Sister at a Window

Artist: Berthe Morisot

Date:  1869

Berthe Morisot (1841 – 1895) was a French painter and a member of the Impressionists. Born into a wealthy family, apparently she and her sister started taking lessons so that they could each make a drawing for their father for his birthday. They were taught privately by Geoffroy-Alphonse Chocarne, a painter trained in the neoclassical tradition. In 1857 Guichard, who ran a school for girls, introduced Berthe and Edma to the Louvre gallery where they learned by copying paintings. At the time girls were not only forbidden to work at the museum unchaperoned, but they were also totally barred from formal training.  Through Guichard they met Corot, landscape painter of the Barbizon school, in 1861, under whose encouragement they began to paint out of doors near Pontoise. It was at the Louvre, she met Fantin-Latour who introduced her to Manet and others including Monet.  In 1864, and the following six years, she exhibited in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris. 

In 1874, she joined the "rejected" Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. It’s hard to imagine a time when the Impressionists weren’t accepted and loved, but back in the 1874 they were avant-garde and disliked. I love this now outrageous description from Le Figaro critic, Albert Wolff, who noted that the Impressionists consisted of "five or six lunatics of which one is a woman...[whose] feminine grace is maintained amid the outpourings of a delirious mind."  As her skill and style improved, opinions towards her changed and in the 1880 exhibition, many reviews judged her to be among the best, including the fore mentioned Albert Wolff. Soon after she was referred to as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.

Berthe was married to Eugène Manet, the brother of her friend and colleague Édouard Manet.  In November 1878, their only child, Julie, was born. Julie posed frequently for her mother and other artistic friends including Renoir and her uncle Édouard. Berthe's home became a meeting place for painters and writers alike, including Renoir, Degas, Mary Cassatt and Stéphane Mallarmé. Morisot made pastels and watercolours as well as oil paintings, and during the final years of her life she experimented with lithography and drypoint etching.

 

The sitter : Berthe had two sisters - Yves and Edma Morisot. According to reports she was closest to Edma and although we can't be sure this may well be Edma. The two sisters were known to travel together, exhibit together, and often painted side by side. The two women, best friends and companions for 12 years, until Edma's marriage when she and her husband moved to Brittany.


Borders & Mounts

None of our prints come with separate mounts. Some have a printed border which replaces the need for a mount, and some are borderless pieces. In either case the edge to edge size of the prints is 'A' sized as stated. If you should want a mount around your print, then you just need to buy a mount for the 'A' size you choose and then a frame to go with that.

What size frame do I need ?

Each piece of artwork in the Musée gallery has been resized to work perfectly with International 'A' paper sizes. All you need to think about when framing your Musée artwork is that it needs to be in the appropriate A sized frame. This means that no part of your artwork will be lost to cropping when choosing frame sizes. It also means that everything will work proportionately in gallery walls, and print sets. There are many budget, off the shelf A sized frames on sites like Etsy and Ebay which we very happily recommend for our prints.

We also now produce our own collection of high quality, professionally framed artwork, ready to hang.

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Our approach to printing is built on the ability to faithfully reproduce artworks using the finest inks and papers available today. A world away from mass produced posters we take pride in producing beautiful, affordable, fine art prints in-house, for discerning interior lovers everywhere.

Giclée Printing - In order to achieve this consistent, outstanding quality we produce every archival pigment print (alternatively know as giclée) to order using the same ink, paper and printing techniques used by museums all over the world. (Giclée is pronounced gee-clay with a soft G) Our archival giclée prints are loved for their vibrant tonal range and the handmade feel of their beautiful textured papers. The quality of a giclée print is far superior to all other forms of printing and when done authentically it is the closest reproduction printing method possible for matching to an original artwork.

Acid Free Paper - Each piece of Musée Art is printed to order on 312 GSM Paper. GSM is a measurement of the thickness of the paper. It is based on calculating the amount a sheet of paper would weigh, in grams, if it was exactly one square metre in size. Paper with a higher GSM will generally be thicker and therefore more difficult to crease or tear. Museum grade acid free papers are made from 100% cotton pulp rather than wood-based products. High quality cotton fibre paper is known to last hundreds of years without appreciable fading, discolouration, or deterioration due to the fact no chemicals are used in its production. Unlike wood based, mass produced alternatives,which will deteriorate, fade and change colour over time.

Inks - Archival pigment printing (giclée) uses inks which have longevity rates calculated at over 100 years. This printing technique must utilise eight or more different ink colours which are colour profiled to match the archival paper to achieve a perfectly colour accurate reproduction of the original piece of art. 

Mount Board - All Musée museum quality prints are professionally mounted on 2.4mm acid free art board ready to free stand or frame. Mounted prints also help to preserve the qualty of the edges and keep the prints perfectly flat with no risk of cockling. Cockling is the process by which a print starts to ripple due to changing levels of ambient moisture which are naturally present in the air in all our homes. Also, when you decide to either change your Musée artwork in your frames or swap them out for a new find, a Musée mounted print will stay flat and safe whilst in storage.

Stacked image of fanned white 312 gms paper showing the high quality and softly woven texture of the surface of the paper.

312 gsm Paper

All muséee prints are reproduced on the finest quality 312 gsm museum archival acid free paper.

Mount Board

All Musée prints are mounted on acid free 2.4 mm mount board ready for
framing or free standing display.

Image of a single sheet of cotton rag paper showing the soft woven texture of the surface.

Cotton Rag

100% natural cotton based paper has a beautiful fine textured finish.