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Variations on a Theme: Berthe Morisot’s Reinterpretation of the “Woman at the Piano” Motif in Her Images of Girls at the Piano, 1888–1892

Ehresmann Hackmann, Erin E.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1306498264

Abstract Details

2011, MA, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Art History.
In this study, I examine Le Piano (1888) and Lucie Léon au Piano (1892) by Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) and the significant ways in which these two paintings depart from the established tradition of female piano portraiture in nineteenth-century France. Charlotte Eyerman has explored the importance of the “woman at the piano” theme and its role in the construction of femininity but limits her study to the work of male artists. Morisot’s piano portraits offer an unusual female perspective on a theme primarily created and perpetuated by male artists. My analysis elucidates the manner in which these works drew upon the tradition of the woman at the piano motif and the specific ways in which the artist subverted the passivity and superficiality that characterized male-produced versions of the theme. Le Piano evokes the tradition of female bourgeois education in nineteenth-century France and the importance of the piano in the development of femininity. However, Morisot enriched the commonplace act of playing the piano with an intellectualism not part of the superficial, socially-ordained reasons for playing in a unique manner that was largely absent from its representations in visual tradition. In Le Piano, by painting the confident figure of her daughter, Julie, nonchalantly leaning on the piano and looking out at the viewer as her cousin, Jeannie Gobillard, plays, Morisot communicated the fulfilling and enjoyable role music-making played in these girls’ lives. In Lucie Léon au Piano, the visual emphasis of the tensed musculature of Léon’s hands and arms invites associations with the conventions of male piano portraiture. While female pianists were generally prized for their charm and delicacy, male pianists, especially the male virtuoso, were conceived of as powerful, insightful, and active musicians. Morisot departed from the static and amateurish qualities common in the woman at the piano motif to create images whose subjects are physically engaged with the act of making music. In both Le Piano and Lucie Léon au Piano, Morisot reversed the conventional subject/beholder relationship. Not only do her pianists look directly out at viewers, thereby denying the right to look without being seen, but the concomitant flattening of pictorial space and insistence of the medium itself confronts the beholder. Drawing upon Michael Fried’s theory of “facingness,” I posit that Morisot’s painterly technique and self-aware subjects work in tandem to create entirely new and assertive images of woman at the piano scenes in the late nineteenth-century Impressionist milieu. Through Le Piano and Lucie Léon au Piano, Morisot articulated a fresh pictorial vocabulary of female pianism that emphasized agency and self-awareness over the traditional measures of femininity.
Theresa Leininger-Miller, PhD (Committee Chair)
Julie Alane Aronson, PhD (Committee Member)
Morgan Thomas, , (Committee Member)
90 p.
Art History
Berthe Morisot; woman at the piano; piano; Impressionism; nineteenth century gender roles; womens studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Ehresmann Hackmann, E. E. (2011). Variations on a Theme: Berthe Morisot’s Reinterpretation of the “Woman at the Piano” Motif in Her Images of Girls at the Piano, 1888–1892 [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1306498264

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Ehresmann Hackmann, Erin. Variations on a Theme: Berthe Morisot’s Reinterpretation of the “Woman at the Piano” Motif in Her Images of Girls at the Piano, 1888–1892. 2011. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1306498264.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Ehresmann Hackmann, Erin. "Variations on a Theme: Berthe Morisot’s Reinterpretation of the “Woman at the Piano” Motif in Her Images of Girls at the Piano, 1888–1892." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1306498264

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1306498264
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© 2011, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Variations on a Theme: Berthe Morisot’s Reinterpretation of the “Woman at the Piano” Motif in Her Images of Girls at the Piano, 1888–1892 by Erin E. Ehresmann Hackmann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.