Berthe Morisot, the Basket Chair, Research Paper

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The scene of the Orange Trees is silent and intent; the other is alive with motion and growth. The first is shadow less and crisply outlined; the other is informal and wild. The Orange Trees portrays a phallic, cross-legged condescension. The other portrays a youthful brashness and disconcern of modern conventionalities (the child is standing tippy-toed striving, as though it were, to break free from her boundaries, the fence in front of her. And the fence is vague as thoguh to give way to the child. The child dominates all.)

Robert Nye describes how the values of Caillebotte's class and time permeated his paintings in the form of the noble gentleman that he often adopted as theme. The codes of honor and comportment of the ruling class males are evident throughout, with rules and precepts tightly binding bourgeois family lei and existence indicating "ossification of the bourgeois family.. [that] was accompanied by a demand for an ultra-virile masculinity which would guarantee and preserve it" (Smith, p. 60). The defense against feminization and emasculation is evident in the Orange Trees with austere pose, stiff hat, shiny garments, and trappings of power are distinguishing markers of distinction between him and the female servant in the background.

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Morisot, a woman, however, stepped out of conventional settings, often drawing her characters, invariably female, out of doors and confining color to a naturalistic framework. Women are unrestrained, not dominated by men, independent, and stepping out of conventional settings. The child, female too, is shown as transcending her background staring wide-eyed in front of her. She has an unrestrained, open future to look forward to. Differences between class and gender have disappeared, and, although both paintings, the Orange Trees and the Basket Chair, are impressionistic in style, both are a world apart in treatment of gender and class. It may be this difference, and the lesson behind it, that the curator may have had in mind when he placed both disparate paintings together, side bys side, in the Museum.

Reference

Smith, Terry E. Invisible Touch: Modernism and Modernity, Univ. Of Chicago Press, 1997

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