The Impressionist Art of Seeing and Being Seen; so the impressive title of Jason Farago’s equally impressive interactive piece at The New York Times – an exploration of Impressionism and its scandalous beginnings in France in the latter half of the 19th century, as exemplified through one particular work of the one woman associated with the movement – Berthe Morisot’s “In England (Eugène Manet à l’Île de Wight)”. [To be seen at the Musée Marmottan in Paris, which houses the largest collection of her works. Unlike her male colleagues she sold very few works during her lifetime. Well, who would have thunk it!]
Farago deconstructs the painting as more than Morisot’s impression of the scene but rendered as an invitation by the artist to explore the multiple gazes – sometimes twice removed, sometimes hidden, always distorted by relative time. No longer discrete, time blurs the edges, and it is no longer clear who is doing the seeing and who or what is being seen.
In 2019, at the time of a major exhibition of her works at the Musée d’Orsay, I read (in German media) for the first time about Morisot. If it is still accessible, I hightly recommend this essay by Julian Barnes in the London Review of Books, from about that time.