Waldemar Januszczak TV - Encyclopedia Americana - Berthe Morisot - Biography online - Art History online - Amanda Vickery TV -
Mademoiselle Berthe Morisot ... You can always tell a Morisot painting – ’cause it’ll definitely be the wildest and bravest thing in the room. Waldemar Januszczak, The Impressionists III: Painting and Revolution: Painting the People, BBC 2011
Unfortunately, Berthe Morisot had a problem: she looked like this – stunning. She turned men’s heads. ibid.
A serious and instinctive and insightful painter. ibid.
Morisot was particularly good with white. ibid.
She [Berthe Morisot] acquired her own reputation by distinguished and beautiful colouring and dash. She was as much admired for her beauty as for her talent. A French critic sums up her qualities as follows: ‘All her work is bathed in brightness, in azure, in sunlight; it is a woman’s work, but it has a strength, a freedom of touch and an originality, which one would hardly have expected. Her water-colours, particularly, belong to a superior art: some notes of colour suffice to indicate sky, sea or a forest background and everything shows a sure and masterly fancy, for which our time can furnish no analogy. A series of Berthe Morisot’s pictures looks like a veritable bouquet, whose brilliancy is less due to the colour-schemes which are comparatively soft (grey and blue) than to the absolute correctness of the values. A hundred canvases and perhaps 300 water-colours attest this talent of high mark. Normandy coasts, scenes with pearly skies and turquoise horizons, radiant gardens of Nice, fruit-laden orchards, girls in white dresses, with big hats wreathed in flowers, young women in ball-dresses and flowers are the favourite themes of this artist.’ Encyclopaedia Americana 1920