The French nineteenth-century painter Berthe Morisot was held by her contemporaries to be the ´quintessential Impressionist´. She was an influential member of the Impressionist group, whose exhibitions she organized with her colleagues Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Degas. This book considers her work in the context of the artistic and social debates of the time. It discusses the meaning that Baudelaire´s famous dictum to paint ´the heroism of modern life´ had for a woman artist painting in the changing city of Paris - a very different city from the Paris of her male colleagues.