Girl with Cat (Jeune fille au chat )

Berthe Morisot was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She had the distinction of being one of only a few women who exhibited with both the Paris Salon and the highly influential and innovative Société Anonyme Coopérative. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt, who shared similar social backgrounds.

Morisot was born into a nineteenth century, haute bourgeois family at a time when the upper middle class was uniquely suited to producing educated women who had the leisure and the financial support to pursue their interests, so long as they did not go against what was considered proper behavior.

Berthe Morisot, however, had such extraordinary talent that her teacher, artist Camille Corot, wrote to Berthe’s mother about her and her sister Edma, "With characters like your daughters, my teaching will make them painters, not minor amateur talents. Do you really understand what that means? In the world of the grande bourgeoisie in which you move, it would be a revolution. I would even say a catastrophe."

As predicted, Morisot successfully pursued an artistic career yet combined it with marriage and motherhood, never forsaking her bourgeois background. In her art and in her lifestyle, she reflected the standards of behavior and propriety required of the nineteenth century bourgeoisie. Through her depictions of her sisters, their families, and her own daughter, Julie Manet, she portrayed an intimacy between women within the realism of the feminine world of the bourgeoisie.

This etching portrays Berthe Morisot’s daughter, Julie Manet. Morisot married Eugène Manet, the brother of famous painter Édouard Manet, and they had one daughter, Julie. Julie Manet became the subject for many of her mother's paintings and a book of her memoirs Growing Up with the Impressionists: The Diary of Julie Manet, was published in 1987.