Print of the Day!! Mon, June 10, 2024. "Jeune fille au Repos"; drypoint; 1889/1910; drypoint, second state.

Print of the Day!! Monday, June 10, 2024. "Jeune fille au Repos" (Young Girl at Rest) is an intaglio, a drypoint, by French printmaker Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) done in 1889, this impression printed in 1910. The platemark measures 3-1/4 x 4-11/16 inches and is unsigned, as usual. This posthumous impression is from the reworked, cancelled second state of three, apart from the uncancelled first state of 25, with cancellation punch holes at two edges of the image. It was published and printed by Theodore Duret for publication in "Manet & the French Impressionists", on an ivory wove paper that measures 9-7/8 x 12-13/16 inches. References for this image include Bailly-Herzberg 7ii and Johnson 83:12. The gallery inventory number for this work is 18460.

An image from our current gallery exhibition: June 1 - August 3rd, 2024.WITNESS: Women Artists Depict Women

This intaglio by Austrian-born French woman printmaker Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) is available from the gallery for purchase, contact the gallery with any condition or other questions. Shipping costs will be discussed. California residents will have sales tax added. Out of state residents may be responsible for use tax, depending on state law.

Check out our virtual booth at the Satellite Print Fair's on-line website: OnPaper.art: https://onpaper.art/the-annex-galleries

Berthe Morisot's activity in printmaking was limited to a single lithograph and eight drypoints dating from the period 1888-1889 that were only published and exhibited after her death.The subject of this drypoint was model Jeanne-Marie Fourmanoir. The first state was printed by Porcaboeuf and issued by Rouartin 1904 in an edition of about 25. The plate was then cancelled by piercing the two circles in the edges of the plate, as seen in this impression. The "cancelled" print was republished in 1910 by Duret and later by Vollard.

Morisot's work often depicted the private realms of women which were so darkly veiled in Victorian era Europe. The result is a legacy of images illuminating the rare moments of solitude, such as in this portrait, experienced by women without the weight of social expectations.

Though barred from formal art school due to her gender, Morisot's bourgeois upbringing afforded her and her sisters private art lessons. It wasn't until taking lessons from Camille Corot, however, that she flourished. She learned to paint en plein air, and soon began to explore the stylistic approach that would become Impressionism. She would become the rare exception to the rule of male-only participants in leading salons, and her work would stand alongside her peers at the seminal 1873 exhibition, "Société Anonyme des Artistes-Peintures, Sculpteurs, et Graveurs," gaining critical acclaim from Le Figaro critic Albert Wolff.

Despite these milestones, and having overcome not only the strife that nipped at the heels of Impressionists but of women as well, Morisot was relegated for the most part to the shadows of art history until very recently.

Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot was born in Bourges, France in 1841. Interest in painting began at an early age, growing up in a traditional bourgeois household that emphasized artistic pursuits. Her father had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts before working for the government of Cher, France, and her mother, Marie-Josephine, was great-niece to renowned Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

Morisot and her sisters received a private art education, restricted to home-taught lessons and chaperoned visits to museums under artist and instructor Joseph Guichard, to copy the styles of Old Masters as well as the most celebrated contemporary artists. Years of employing this learning technique at the Louvre led to her introduction and subsequent friendships with Édouard Manet and Claude Monet, as well as landscape painter Jean-Baptist Camille Corot, who introduced Morisot to painting en plein air -- a conceptual change for an artist who had thus far been confined to mirroring what had already been executed.

When Morisot eventually married, to Manet's brother Eugene, she continued to exhibit under her full maiden name to retain her recognition, showing, as always, the confidence she held in her abilities as an artist. By the time of her death by pneumonia in 1895 at age 54, her career was considered on par with her contemporaries, though her standing in art history has been greatly dismissed until recently.

In recent years, the art world has seen drastic changes in its attitude toward artists who've been relegated to "minority" status: women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and more. For fifty-three years the Annex Galleries has observed these changes, and have been fortunate to contribute to the conversation.

With our current exhibition Witness: Women Artists Depict Women, we are featuring works works on paper by women from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries from our inventory. This curation focuses on women as seen by their peers, the images intimate, personal, unexpected, and without the burden of the male gaze. Ranging from the known (Imogene Cunningham, Bertha Lum, Käthe Kollwitz, etc.) to the nearly forgotten or unknown, this exhibition includes original fine prints, drawings, paintings, and photographs from the late 19th to the early 21st centuries.

Ranging from Surrealism to Figurative, from Impressionist to Post Modernist, we've curated a diverse range of imagery to illuminate the story of women in the arts as well as in the world. Hope you can make it, if not please check out the exhibition on-line.