Editing Impressionism (section)

== Female Impressionists ==
[[File:Berthe Morisot The Harbor at Lorient.jpg|thumb|[[Berthe Morisot]], ''[[The Harbour at Lorient]]'', 1869, [[National Gallery of Art]], Washington, D.C.]]

Impressionists, in varying degrees, were looking for ways to depict visual experience and contemporary subjects.{{sfnp|Garb|1986|p=9}} Female Impressionists were interested in these same ideals but had many social and career limitations compared to male Impressionists.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Murray |first=Gale |date=2018-03-15 |title=Her Paris: Women Artists in the Age of Impressionism |url=http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring18/murray-reviews-her-paris-women-artists-in-the-age-of-impressionism |journal=Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide |volume=17 |issue=1 |doi=10.29411/ncaw.2018.17.1.12|doi-access=free }}</ref> They were particularly excluded from the imagery of the bourgeois social sphere of the boulevard, cafe, and dance hall.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Women, art, and society|last=Chadwick|first=Whitney|publisher=Thames & Hudson|year=2012|isbn=978-0-500-20405-4|edition=Fifth|location=London|page=232|oclc=792747353}}</ref>

As well as imagery, women were excluded from the formative discussions that resulted in meetings in those places. That was where male Impressionists were able to form and share ideas about Impressionism.<ref name=":0" /> In the academic realm, women were believed to be incapable of handling complex subjects, which led teachers to restrict what they taught female students.{{sfnp|Garb|1986|p=6}} It was also considered unladylike to excel in art, since women's true talents were then believed to center on homemaking and mothering.{{sfnp|Garb|1986|p=6}}

Yet several women were able to find success during their lifetime, even though their careers were affected by personal circumstances – Bracquemond, for example, had a husband who was resentful of her work which caused her to give up painting.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=Women Artists in Paris, 1850–1900|last1=Laurence|first1=Madeline|last2=Kendall|first2=Richard|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2017|isbn=978-0-300-22393-4|location=New York, New Haven|page=41|chapter=Women Artists and Impressionism|oclc=982652244}}</ref> The four most well known, namely, [[Mary Cassatt]], [[Eva Gonzalès]], [[Marie Bracquemond]], and [[Berthe Morisot]], are, and were, often referred to as the 'Women Impressionists'. Their participation in the series of eight Impressionist exhibitions that took place in Paris from 1874 to 1886 varied: Morisot participated in seven, Cassatt in four, Bracquemond in three, and Gonzalès did not participate.<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{cite web |url=https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/berthe-morisot |title=Berthe Morisot |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200106035811/https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/berthe-morisot |archive-date=6 January 2020 |website=National Museum of Women in the Arts |access-date=18 May 2019 |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Young Girl at a Window.JPG|thumb|upright|[[Mary Cassatt]], ''Young Girl at a Window,'' 1885, oil on canvas, [[National Gallery of Art]], Washington, D.C.]]

The critics of the time lumped these four together without regard to their personal styles, techniques, or subject matter.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist|last=Kang|first=Cindy|publisher=Rizzoli Electra|year=2018|isbn=978-0-8478-6131-6|location=New York, NY|page=31|oclc=1027042476}}</ref> Critics viewing their works at the exhibitions often attempted to acknowledge the women artists' talents but circumscribed them within a limited notion of femininity.{{sfnp|Garb|1986|p=36}} Arguing for the suitability of Impressionist technique to women's manner of perception, Parisian critic S.C. de Soissons wrote:<blockquote>One can understand that women have no originality of thought, and that literature and music have no feminine character; but surely women know how to observe, and what they see is quite different from that which men see, and the art which they put in their gestures, in their toilet, in the decoration of their environment is sufficient to give is the idea of an instinctive, of a peculiar genius which resides in each one of them.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Adler |first1=Kathleen |title=Perspectives on Morisot |date=1990 |publisher=Hudson Hills Press |location=New York |isbn=1-55595-049-3 |page=60 |edition=1st |url=https://primo.lib.umn.edu/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=UMN_ALMA21430754870001701&context=L&vid=MORRIS&search_scope=Primocentral&tab=primocentral&lang=en_US |access-date=28 April 2019 |archive-date=25 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225171013/https://primo.lib.umn.edu/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=UMN_ALMA21430754870001701&context=L&vid=MORRIS&search_scope=Primocentral&tab=primocentral&lang=en_US |url-status=live }}</ref></blockquote>

While Impressionism legitimized the domestic social life as subject matter, of which women had intimate knowledge, it also tended to limit them to that subject matter. Portrayals of often-identifiable sitters in domestic settings, which could offer commissions, were dominant in the exhibitions.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Women Artists in Paris, 1850–1900|last1=Laurence|first1=Madeline|last2=Kendall|first2=Richard|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2017|isbn=978-0-300-22393-4|location=New York, New York|page=49|chapter=Women Artists and Impressionism|oclc=982652244}}</ref> The subjects of the paintings were often women interacting with their environment by either their gaze or movement. Cassatt, in particular, was aware of her placement of subjects: she kept her predominantly female figures from objectification and cliche; when they are not reading, they converse, sew, drink tea, and when they are inactive, they seem lost in thought.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Mary Cassatt, Modern Woman|last=Barter|first=Judith A.|publisher=Art Institute of Chicago in association with H.N. Abrams|year=1998|isbn=0-8109-4089-2|edition=1st|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/marycassattmoder0000cass/page/63 63]|oclc=38966030|url=https://archive.org/details/marycassattmoder0000cass/page/63}}</ref>

The women Impressionists, like their male counterparts, were striving for "truth", for new ways of seeing and new painting techniques; each artist had an individual painting style.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Women Impressionists|last=Pfeiffer|first=Ingrid|publisher=Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt|year=2008|isbn=978-3-7757-2079-3|location=Frankfurt am Main|page=22|chapter=Impressionism Is Feminine: On the Reception of Morisot, Cassatt, Gonzalès, and Bracquemond|oclc=183262558}}</ref> Women Impressionists, particularly Morisot and Cassatt, were conscious of the balance of power between women and objects in their paintings – the bourgeois women depicted are not defined by decorative objects, but instead, interact with and dominate the things with which they live.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Mary Cassatt, Modern Woman|last=Barter|first=Judith A.|publisher=Art Institute of Chicago in association with H.N. Abrams|year=1998|isbn=0-8109-4089-2|edition=1st|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/marycassattmoder0000cass/page/65 65]|oclc=38966030|url=https://archive.org/details/marycassattmoder0000cass/page/65}}</ref> There are many similarities in their depictions of women who seem both at ease and subtly confined.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Meyers|first=Jeffery|date=September 2008|title=Longing and Constraint|journal=Apollo|volume=168|page=128|via=ProQuest LLC}}</ref> Gonzalès' ''Box at the Italian Opera'' depicts a woman staring into the distance, at ease in a social sphere but confined by the box and the man standing next to her. Cassatt's painting ''Young Girl at a Window'' is brighter in color but remains constrained by the canvas edge as she looks out the window.

[[File:Eva Gonzalès (1849-1883) Een loge in het Théâtre des Italiens (1874) Musée d'Orsay 22-8-2017 17-29-43.JPG|thumb|[[Eva Gonzalès]], ''Une Loge aux Italiens,'' or, ''Box at the Italian Opera,'' {{Circa|1874}}, oil on canvas, [[Musée d'Orsay]], Paris]]

Despite their success in their ability to have a career and Impressionism's demise attributed to its allegedly feminine characteristics—its sensuality, dependence on sensation, physicality, and fluidity—the four women artists, and other, lesser-known women Impressionists, were largely omitted from art historical textbooks covering Impressionist artists until Tamar Garb's ''Women Impressionists'' published in 1986.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Perspectives on Morisot|last=Adler|first=Kathleen|publisher=Hudson Hills Press|others=Edelstein, T. J., Mount Holyoke College. Art Museum.|year=1990|isbn=1-55595-049-3|edition=1st|location=New York|page=57|oclc=21764484}}</ref> For example, ''Impressionism'' by Jean Leymarie, published in 1955 included no information on any women Impressionists.

Painter [[Androniqi Zengo Antoniu]] is co-credited with the introduction of impressionism to [[Albania]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Keefe |first1=Eugene K. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CXmB6nDu4_AC&dq=Androniqi+Zengo+Antoniu&pg=PA142 |title=Area Handbook for Albania |author2=American University (Washington, D. C.) Foreign Area Studies |date=1971 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |language=en}}</ref>