Berthe
Morisot(b Bourges, Cher, 14 Jan 1841; d Paris, 2
March 1895).
French painter and printmaker. As the child of
upper middle-class parents, Marie-Joséphine-Cornélie and
Edme Tiburce Morisot, she was expected to be a skilled
amateur artist and was thus given appropriate schooling. In
1857 she attended drawing lessons with Geoffroy-Alphonse
Chocarne ( fl 1838–57), but in 1858 she and her
sister Edma left to study under Joseph-Benoît Guichard, a
pupil of Ingres and Delacroix. In the same year they
registered as copyists in the Louvre, copying Veronese and
Rubens. The sisters were introduced to Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot in 1861 and took advice from him and subsequently from
his pupil, Achille-François Oudinot (1820–91). Through these
artists they became familiar with current debates on
naturalism and began to work en plein air, painting
at Pontoise, Normandy and Brittany (e.g. Thatched Cottage
in Normandy, 1865; priv. col.).