DESSERT]

Berthe Morisot will remain the most fascinating figure of
Impressionism,--the one who has stated most precisely the femineity of
this luminous and iridescent art. Having married Eugène Manet, the
brother of the great painter, she exhibited at various private
galleries, where the works of the first Impressionists were to be
seen, and became as famous for her talent as for her beauty. When Manet
died, she took charge of his memory and of his work, and she helped with
all her energetic intelligence to procure them their just and final
estimation. Mme. Eugène Manet has certainly been one of the most
beautiful types of French women of the end of the nineteenth century.
When she died prematurely at the age of fifty (in 1895), she left a
considerable amount of work: gardens, young girls, water-colours of
refined taste, of surprising energy, and of a colouring as
distinguished, as it is unexpected. As great grand-daughter of
Fragonard, Berthe Morisot (since we ought to leave her the name with
which her respect for Manet's great name made her always sign her works)
seemed to have inherited from her famous ancestor his French
gracefulness, his spirited elegance, and all his other great qualities.
She has also felt the influence of Corot, of Manet and of Renoir. All
her work is bathed in brightness, in azure, in sunlight; it is a woman's
work, but it has a strength, a freedom of touch and an originality,
which one would hardly have expected. Her water-colours, particularly,
belong to a superior art: some notes of colour suffice to indicate sky,
sea, or a forest background, and everything shows a sure and masterly
fancy, for which our time can offer no analogy. A series of Berthe
Morisot's works looks like a veritable bouquet whose brilliancy is due
less to the colour-schemes which are comparatively soft, grey and blue,