Minor Intimacies and the Art of Berthe Morisot: Impressionism, Female Friendship and Spectatorship

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the topic of minor intimacies or attachments in the work of Berthe Morisot (1841–95). By analysing three inter-connected areas in Morisot, namely the absorbed self, female friendship and the material history of painting, and by comparing the works studied with other well-known Impressionist paintings by Manet and Renoir, and how each area impacts upon spectatorship, this article shows the importance of intimacy as a critical tool with which to gain a more complete understanding of modern life and art in late nineteenth-century France.