Edma Morisot

Edma Morisot (French: [mɔʁizo]; Marie Edma Caroline Morisot-Pontillon; 13 December 1839 – 2 May 1921) was a French artist and the older sister of the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot.

Early life and education Edma Morisot was born in 1839 in Valenciennes, France. Brought up largely in Paris, Edma Morisot received a bourgeois education, like her sisters Yves and Berthe, that included piano and drawing. All three sisters were encouraged to pursue drawing by their mother, who had them first study with the neoclassical painter Geoffroy Alphonse Chocane in 1857. Edma and Berthe both wanted to pursue their training further, which led them to take lessons under the well-regarded painter Joseph Guichard, a former student of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. According to Armand Forreau's 1925 biography of Berthe Morisot, Guichard is said to have warned their mother: "With natures like those of your daughters my teaching will not confer the meagre talent of genteel accomplishment, they will become painters. Do you have any idea what that means? In your milieu of the grande bourgeoisie it would be a revolution." Guichard encouraged the young women to copy paintings at the Louvre, which the two women visited chaperoned by their mother. There, they met the artist Félix Bracquemond in 1859, who introduced them to Henri Fantin-Latour. In 1863, when Corot became too busy to continue to instruct them, Edma and Berthe came under the tutelage of another Barbican painting, Achille François Oudinot.

Career

Edma's landscape paintings were strongly influenced by the Barbizon style of her instructors, such as Corot. She painted numerous landscapes, but in 1863 she also turned to portraiture. That year, she painted a remarkable portrait of her sister Berthe (now in a private collection), which shows her concentrating in front of her canvas.

In 1864 she submitted two paintings to the annual Salon, both of which were accepted. In 1867 Edma also sent three paintings to a provincial exhibition in Bordeaux, one of many organised by the Friends of Art societies.

Relationship with Berthe Morisot The two sisters were close in their youth, supporting and constructively critiquing each other as they developed as painters. "In her crucial, formative years," Berthe "depended most of all on her sister. Behind Berthe Morisot was Edma Morisot."