At the risk of offending my fellow feminists…

I must say that if you see an Impressionist scene of domestic bliss with a couple of listless ladies sitting around looking bored, it’s probably by a 20th century female painter like Berthe Morisot. Could it be because women at that time were restricted to the household space and therefore limited to painting women? Or could it be that ol’ Berthe was harboring some lust for the ladies in them bones? Since pictures like this one convey no erotic undertones, let’s just stick to the former assumption! 

Morisot was super chummy with her sister Edma, who was also a student of painting. But when Edma got hitched, she quit painting to direct full focus towards becoming a housewife extraordinaire. (Feminists, are you still with me??) Her wifely role reached its height when she got knocked up and decided to wait out the pregnancy at her mother’s. Here we have Edma seated patiently behind mommy dearest, wearing a fashionable maternity outfit to conceal her baby bump. 

Now, Morisot was a bit fretful about having this painting exhibited at the Salon, being a tad unsure of her own painterly prowess. In her perturbed state, she consulted close friend and painting guru, Édouard Manet, and asked him to look it over. He visited the Morisot home the last day before the exhibit, and without hesitation began painting over the mother’s figure! Ugh. Keep your savvy strokes to your own canvas, Ed. Needless to say, Morisot was less than pleased.