Impressionism's 'forgotten woman' shines in new Paris show

The first major show of Berthe Morisot’s paintings in France in nearly 80 years puts the forgotten woman of Impressionism back at the centre of the movement she helped found. One damning review of the first exhibition by the group that would revolutionise art blasted that it was no more than “five or six lunatics of which one is a woman …[whose] feminine grace is maintained amid the outpourings of a delirious mind.” That 1874 show included such soon-to-be art giants as Monet and Manet, whose brother Eugene later married Morisot. But after her early death at 54, when she caught pneumonia after nursing their daughter through the illness, Morisot slipped into the shadow of her more famous male peers like Renoir and Degas. Now a new show at the Musee d’Orsay, the first dedicated to her work by a major Paris institution since 1941, puts Morisot back in the rightful place as one of the most startling and innovative artists of her time.