Women Born In The 19th Century

"It is made of nothing, a nothingness multiplied by the supreme art of her touch, the merest touch of mist, a hint of swans, the quick touch of a brush barely rubbing the fabric. This gentle brushing gives us everything: the time of day, the season, and the knowledge, the promptitude which that confers, the great gift of reducing things to their essence, of lightening matter to the extreme and, through that, of taking the impression of the workings of the mind to its highest degree."

"Berthe Morisot's uniqueness way to 'live' her painting, and to paint her life.. ..she took up, put down, returned to her brush like a thought that comes to us, is clean forgotten, then occurs to us once again. It is this that gives her work the very particular charm of a close, almost indissoluble connection between the artist's ideal and the intimacy of an individual life."

"She wanted it [the studio] not facing north, but full south; the light is diffused through cream-colored blinds; there is not a dark corner to be seen. The daffodils, tulips, and peonies in vases stand out against a bright background, with their transparent flesh, the flat, uniform modeling of objects and faces before a window. Lighting such as this reputedly drains a scene of color; but I do not believe that before Berthe Morisot, any artist deliberately, invariably painted in the absence of effect – by which I mean suppressing the oppositions of shade and half-tones and choosing to highlight a figure by the apposition of color of the same bright value."

"Before my eyes, she made a charming portrait of Mlle Marguerite Carré in a pink dress, pale pink, the whole canvas was pale. Berthe Morisot was already very much herself, eliminating shadows and half-tones from the natural scene.. ..She touched her canvas like the bloom of a cheek, treating a millstone, a suburban poplar tree, a mouth, or a tulle scarf all alike.. ..I should like to believe that she perhaps suggested, to Claude Monet or Sisley, that a Parisian view or the landscape around Paris, a garden, a railway bridge, poppies in a pale field of oats.. .. were painterly motifs.."

"A small woman in white, wearing a delicate knitted cap, looks at herself in a small hand-held mirror; she is sitting on a sofa, also white, silhouetted against a white muslin curtain through which the light passes, playing deliciously over the whole symphony of white, and the effect of the back-lighting creates astonishing shades of gray. Such difficulty overcome with such charm [in the painting 'Jeune Femme au miroir / Young Woman at Her Looking Glass', Berthe Morisot painted in 1876]."

"[the light] seems to break as if by force through a limpid crystal glass or block of ice. It retains its tender blue, and its green embers, it acquires a fragile brilliance, it radiates with fresh palpitations, shimmering and sparkling.. .The whole canvas is phosphorescent with the great brilliance of marine light pouring in from outside.. ..this clear brilliance that traverses the walls, harmonizes the colors, animates vague forms with strange life, is rediscovered wherever Mme Morisot has left her personal mark."

"If I may put it in these terms, she [Berthe Morisot] eliminates cumbersome epithets, weightily adverbs, in her clear phrasing: everything is subject and verb; she has a kind of telegrammatic style with sparkling, polished vocabulary.."

"Berthe Morisot is disturbing. In her exquisite works there is a morbid curiosity that astonishes and charmes. Morisot seems to paint with her nerves on edge, providing a few scanty traces to create complete disquieting evocations."

"My dear Berthe, I have indeed just received a visit from the dreaded Pissarro who spoke about your next [groups-]exposition. The gentlemen don't seem to be able to agree [the exposing artists]. Gauguin is playing the great dictator. Sisley, who – I also saw, would like to know what Monet should do [participating or not]. As for Renoir, he hasn't yet returned to Paris. I am surprised Eugène [Manet -the brother of Edouard and husband of Berthe] did not remember that it was very cold in Florence – we shivered there for two months once before.."

"Take this book, when violet Dawn Rises over the Wood To the house of Madame Eugène Manet To the road of far-away Villejust, number 40"

"[Berthe Morisot] always painted standing up, walking back and forth before the canvas. She would stare at her subject for a long time (and her look was piercing), her hand ready to place her brushstrokes just where she wanted them.. ..[her method was] to start with a light pencil-sketch, to repeat or very the theme in sanguine, to remodel the composition in pastel and, quite often, to carry forward the theme in watercolor and occasionally to carry it to a final culmination in a finished oil."

"Father, perfect my trust; Let my spirit feel in death, That her feet are firmly set On the rock of a living faith!"

"Nearer my Father's house, Where the many mansions be, Nearer the great white throne, Nearer the crystal sea. Nearer the bound of life, Where we lay our burdens down, Nearer leaving the cross, Nearer gaining the crown."

"And though hard be the task, "Keep a stiff upper lip.""

"Her washing ended with the day, Yet lived she at its close, And passed the long, long night away In darning ragged hose. But when the sun in all its state Illumed the Eastern skies, She passed about the kitchen grate And went to making pies."

"These are weighty secrets, and we must whisper them."

"The tasks are done and the tears are shed. Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover; Yesterday’s wounds, which smarted and bled, Are healed with the healing that night has shed."

"The Autumn seems to cry for thee, Best lover of the Autumn-days!"

"She stood amid the morning dew, And sang her earliest measure sweet, Sang as the lark sings,speeding fair, to touch and taste the purer air"

"Men die but sorrow never dies."

"My soul is full of whispered song,— My blindness is my sight; The shadows that I feared so long Are full of life and light."

"Desolate—Life is so dreary and desolate— Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle, Yet with itself every soul standeth single, Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan— Holding and having its brief exultation— Making its lonesome and low lamentation— Fighting its terrible conflicts alone."

"How many lives we live in one, And how much less than one, in all."

"Her religious sentiments were deep and strong, her faith in the Eternal Goodness unwavering. Educated in the faith of Universalism, she believed to the last in the final salvation of all God's children."

"...It is sad and discouraging that the reports of dear Leopold show no improvement, & I am sure it must be a worry to you. All one can say, is that one has tried all for the best, & one must bear in mind that possibly it may be some time still before he can use his legs properly after such repeated attacks & that paralysis..."

"We serve Him most who take the most of His exhaustless love."

"Yea, when mortality dissolves, Shall I not meet thine hour unawed? My house eternal in the heavens Is lighted by the smile of God!"

"One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone."

"From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war."

"The lady of the house, notorious Margot, was less remarkable than unlikely to escape remark ever since her supposed début in Benson's Dodo, when she must have been "a resolute little tit", as was said of young Victoria. A woman of emphatic character and affections, she was either an ally or an embarrassment, at moments both. Ebullient, shrewd and tactless, she assisted her consort rather by energy than subtlety, for she had bouts of belief that honesty is thwarted by politeness. "Why," she must say to the Swiss Minister, "are the Swiss the plainest people in Europe?" She was clever but not profound, and said more trenchant things than good ones in her desire to reign over a world which she was always making her own. I was sorry for her when it slipped too soon for a soul irrevocably on the active list. She could not, and would not, be omitted from any call-up of ghosts."

"Through the pages of [her book] Lay Sermons walk the great. I don't say that Margot Asquith actually permits us to rub elbows with them ourselves, but she willingly shows us her own elbow, which has been, so to say, honed on the mighty."

"... no matter where she takes off from, she brings the discourse back to Margot Asquith. Such singleness of purpose is met but infrequently."

"The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature."

"Of a smooth society lady, she said, "she told enough white lies to ice a cake." And of a particularly hideous house she'd been to stay in, she said: "It was so uncomfortable – the chairs were covered in apples stuffed with lead. And in the hall, (talking presumably of the butler) "I was met by a stout rhinoceros carrying visiting-cards in one hand, and azaleas in the other.""

"Margo. The 'T' is silent as in Harlow."

"Kitchener, a great man or a great poster?"

"You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius...."

"The t is silent, as in Harlow."

"My dear old friend King George V told me he would never have died but for that vile doctor, Lord Dawson of Penn."

"He couldn't see a belt without hitting below it."

"She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake."

"He's very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head."

"Lloyd George? There is no Lloyd George. There is a marvellous brain; but if you were to shut him in a room and look through the keyhole there would be nobody there."

"Rich men's houses are seldom beautiful, rarely comfortable, and never original. It is a constant source of surprise to people of moderate means to observe how little a big fortune contributes to Beauty."

"I have received a commission to make a poster against war. That is a task that makes me happy. Some may say a thousand times that this is not pure art.... but as long as I can work, I want to be effective with my art."

"Der Künstler ist meist ein Kind seiner Zeit, besonders, wenn seine eigene Entwicklungsperiode in die Zeit des frühen Sozialismus fällt. Meine Entwicklungszeit fiel in die Zeit des frühen Sozialismus. Dieser ergriff mich gänzlich. Von einer bewußten Arbeit im Dienste des Proletariats war damals für mich keine Rede. Was kümmerten mich aber Schönheitsgesetze, wie zum Beispiel die der Griechen, die nicht meine eigenen waren, von mir empfunden und nachgefühlt? Das Proletariat war für mich eben Schön."

"For work, one must be hard and thrust outside of oneself what one has lived through."

"Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is hard work."

"Every war already carries within it the war that will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything is smashed. That is why I am so wholeheartedly for a radical end to this madness and why my only hope is in world socialism."

"For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen had beauty; the Polish jimkes on their grain ships had beauty; the broad freedom of movement in the gestures of the common people had beauty. Middle-class people held no appeal for me at all. Bourgeois life on the whole seemed to me pedantic."