Morisots Wet Nurse

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Morisots Wet Nurse

• The Construction of Work and Leisure in
  Impressionist Painting
• Linda Nochlin

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• All that is solid melts into air. - Karl Marx,
  The Communist Manifesto

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Look Again

• Berthe Morisot, The Wet Nurse and Julie, 1879

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Work in 19th Century France
Jean Francois Millet, The Gleaners

• What was the status of the woman worker?
• Work was normally depicted by a male rural
  laborer, engaged in productive physical labor on
  the farm.
• Although male workers dominated, scenes of women
  laborers were present.

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Giovanni Segantini, The Two Mothers, 1868
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Work in Impressionism
Berthe Morisot, Woman Hanging the Washing, 1881
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Edgar Degar, La Classe de Danse
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The Bottom Line?
Edouard Manet, Bar at the Folies-Berger, 1881

• Womans work is associated with leisure,
  regardless of the actual activity.

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Work Scene?

• Edouard Manet, Dejuner sur LHerbe, 1881

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The Wet Nurse An Anomally

• She is still selling her body, just as a
  prostitute.
• Selling of body for a virtuous cause.
• Performing a natural womans act, but not
  naturally, rather for a profit.

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Edgar Degas, Carriage at the Races, 1869
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Morisot and Work Scenes
Young Girl Reclining
The Wet Nurse

• Morisot was not associated with work scenes. The
  Wet Nurse is not an attempt to record a social
  document. Instead, it is intent on the visual, as
  are many impressionist paintings of the time.

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A Different Perspective

• Instead of having a male artist painting his wife
  and children, we have a woman artist painting her
  husband and daughter. Do you think there is a
  masculine air present?

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Production and Purpose?
Girl with Greyhound, 1893
Self-Portrait, 1885

• The work that went into creating these images
  is evident in every brushstroke.

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• All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their
  train of ancient and venerable prejudices and
  opinions are swept away, all new formed ones
  become antiquated before they can ossify All
  that is solid melts into air, all that is holy
  profaned, and men at last are forced to face the
  real conditions of their lives and relations with
  fellow men. -Karl Marx