Johnston, W. Wesley.

The Graphic Work of Berthe Morisot: A Collector’s Guide and Catalogue Raisonné [electronic book].

San Francisco, Calif.: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, June, 2010. Recent publication. CD-R. 147 pp. All states fully illustrated in color. When historian Wesley Johnston sought solid information about the original prints of the French Impressionist Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), he found radically conflicting information. Even the chronology of editions of the artist's prints by Janine Bailly-Herzberg, published in 1979 in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, which has been the standard reference, is inaccurate. Johnston’s catalogue now provides the missing details so the collector can distinguish one state or one edition from another and know which are early and which are later impressions.
Five years of research went into the book, seeking the answers to the questions that collectors ask about an artist’s œuvre: finding and evaluating all prior catalogues; obtaining information on the artist’s prints in public collections around the world; finding contemporary accounts of the editions; comparing and evaluating the visual characteristics of many impressions from the same plate; compiling a definitive list of the physical characteristics of the different editions..

As part of the research, Johnston created a preliminary catalogue raisonné of the monographs on the Impressionists by Théodore Duret (1838-1927), since several of them contain original Morisot prints as well as works by her contemporaries such as Renoir, Cézanne and Pissarro. No one had catalogued Duret’s books before even though these are a major source of original - although posthumously printed - graphics by the Impressionists. Johnston provides collectors with definitive answers to their questions about Morisot’s prints: How many plates? How many states? How many editions? How many impressions? What are characteristics of the editions? Which watermarks were on the prints? This item is printed on demand and provided on a CD-R. Item #326-6

Price: $50.00