Marie Bracquemond was a French Impressionist artist described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of the "le trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt.[1] However, her often omission from books on women artists indicate the success of her husband, Félix Bracquemond, in his campaign to thwart her development as an artist. His objection to her art was not on the basis of gender but on the style she adopted, Impressionism. She was born Marie Quivoron in 1840 in Argenton, near Quimper, Brittany. Her background contrasts sharply with the cultured, prosperous, stable milieu of the other female Impressionists - Cassatt, Morisot, Gonzal?s. She was the child of an unhappy arranged marriage. Her father, a sea captain, died shortly after her birth. Her mother quickly remarried to a M. Pasquiou, and thereafter they led an unsettled existence, moving from Brittany to the Jura, to Switzerland, and to the Auvergne, before settling in 3ò4tampes, south of Paris. She had one sister, Louise, born while her family lived at Corr?ze, near Ussel, in the Auvergne, in the ancient abbey of Bonnes-Aigues.
She began lessons in painting in her teens under the instruction of M. Wasser, "an old painter who now restored paintings and gave lessons to the young women of the town". She progressed to such an extent that in 1857 she submitted a painting of her mother, sister and old teacher posed in the studio to the Salon which was accepted. She was then introduced to Ingres who advised her and introduced her to two of his students, Flandrin and Signol. The critic Philippe Burty referred to her as "one of the most intelligent pupils in Ingres' studio". She later left Ingres' studio and began receiving commissions for her work, including one from the court of Empress Eugenie for a painting of Cervantes in prison. This evidently pleased, because she was then asked by the Count de Nieuwerkerke, the director-general of French museums, to make important copies in the Louvre. It was while she was copying Old Masters in the Louvre that she was seen by Félix Bracquemond who fell in love with her. His friend, the critic Montrosier, arranged an introduction and from then, she and Félix were inseparable. They were engaged for two years before they married in 1869, despite her mother's opposition. In 1870 they had their only child, Pierre. Because of the scarcity of good medical care during the War of 1870 and the Paris Commune, Bracquemond's already delicate health deteriorated after her son's birth. Félix and Marie Bracquemond worked together at the Haviland studio at Auteuil where her husband had become artistic director. She designed plates for dinner services and executed large faience tile panels depicting the muses, which were shown at the Universal Exhibition of 1878. She began having paintings accepted for the Salon on a regular basis from 1864. As she found the medium constraining, her husband's efforts to teach her etching were only a qualified success. She nevertheless produced nine etching which were shown at the second exhibition of the Society of Painter-Etchers at the Galeries Durand-Reul in 1890.
Her husband introduced her to new media and to the artists he admired, as well as older masters such as Chardin. She was especially attracted to the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens. Between 1887 and 1890, under the influence of the Impressionists, Bracquemond's style began to change. Her canvases grew larger and her colours intensified. She moved out of doors, and to her husband's disgust, Monet and Degas became her mentors.
Marie Bracquemond participated in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1879, 1880, and 1886. In 1879 and 1880, some of her drawings were published in the La Vie Moderne. In 1881, she exhibited five works at the Dudley Gallery in London. Many of her best-known works were painted in her garden at àvres.
In 1886, Félix Bracquemond met Gauguin through Sisley and brought the impoverished artist home. Gauguin had a decisive influence on Marie Bracquemond and, in particular, he taught her how to prepare her canvas in order to achieve the intense tones she now desired.
Although she was overshadowed by her well-known husband, the work of the reclusive Marie Bracquemond is considered to have been closer to the ideals of Impressionism. According to their son Pierre, Félix Bracquemond was often resentful of his wife, brusquely rejecting her critique of his work, and refusing to show her paintings to visitors. In 1890, Marie Bracquemond, worn out by the continual household friction and discouraged by lack of interest in her work, abandoned her painting except for a few private works. One of her last paintings was The Artist's Son and Sister in the Garden at àvres.
She died in Paris in 1916.
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