Today Berthe Morisot is considered a major Impressionist artist, a new development despite the respect received from peers Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir in her lifetime. Like them Morisot cultivated an innovative style and turned her attention from lofty subjects to the banality of everyday life. Through the lens of history, these charming scenes of women and children have come to be interpreted as diary-like studies, a limiting interpretation this important volume does much to resolve.

Lush illustrations from throughout Morisot's long career highlight her formal experimentations, variety of paint applications, textural work, perspectival shifts, and radical exploration of unfinished states. With intimacy and something of Mallarmé's attempt to 'fix something of the passing moment' as her primary projects, Morisot showed alongside her fellow impressionist artists from their first group exhibition to their list, missing only one show. The artist's central position within the Parisian avant-garde made her home a hub for the great literary and artistic minds of her day, a home further radicalised by her husband's decision to abandon his artistic practice in support of hers. An introduction and essay examining Morisot within feminist scholarship serves as a jumping off point for texts chronicling Morisot's critical reception, initial embrace of Impressionism, her chosen subjects, settings, and her relationship with later movements, including Postimpressionism and Symbolism. Where previous catalogs have attempted a comprehensive overview, this volume sets a new precedent with never-before-published letters, interdisciplinary scholarship, and a specific focus on Morisot's pioneering developments as a painter first, woman second.