Mattea Gernentz

This project examines the lives and art of women Impressionists, such as Marie Bracquemond, Berthe Morisot, and Eva Gonzalès, and particularly explores their unique relationship with parks and gardens in nineteenth-century France. Under the influence of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann, green spaces in Paris multiplied. As a result, vibrant and accessible new landscapes for the ‘flâneuse’ were created, offering painters alternative sites of inspiration. After all, the traditionally ‘masculine’ urban avenues roamed by Baudelaire were deemed to be unsafe for bourgeois women. Parks and gardens were deeply important as a setting and subject for the Impressionists, and the natural world served as a means of liberation and source of inspiration for each of these women. My research, which rests at the intersection of ecology and art history, invaluably nuances the existing dialogues surrounding Impressionism, which have often centred its male creatives or solely emphasised women’s work in relation to the domestic sphere.