Berthe Morisot was born at Bourges, France in 1841. She was daughter of a successful and wealthy government official who himself was an enthusiastic amateur painter and supporter of the arts. Being part of a family of wealth and culture she received the conventional lessons in drawing and painting and eventually decided to make a career of these pursuits.

A French painter and printmaker she was the first woman to join the circle of the French impressionist painters. She exhibited in most of their shows and despite the protests of friends and family she continued to participate in their struggle for recognition.

By age 20 she had befriended Camille Corot, the important landscape painter of the Barbizon school. Corot started tutoring Berthe and her sister Edma in their painting and also introduced them to other artists and teachers. She worked under his guidance from 1862 to 1868.

She also experimented with seascapes, but being a leading exponent of Impressionism she painted mainly what she saw in her immediate, everyday life. As a woman securely in the "haute bourgeoisie" that constituted domestic interiors, holiday spots, other women and children.

Berthe Morisot died on March 2, 1895 in Paris and was interred in the Cimetière de Passy.