They Followed Each Other

Manet & Morisot

Legion of Honor

Ongoing – March 1, 2026

PRÉFACE

A great fuss is being made about Manet & Morisot and rightly so. This exhibition is on its first stop of a tour that will take it across the US and features masterpieces from public and private collections on both sides of the Atlantic.

One special treat, the reuniting for the first time in 140 years a series of paintings in which Morisot and Manet depicted the four seasons of the year as fashionable women: Morisot’s Summer and Winter and the paintings by Manet that she inspired, Spring and Autumn.

L2R: Spring; Summer; Autumn and Winter

If you have a few moments for a consideration of aesthetics, I encourage you to read on.

What makes for a great friendship? In my life I’ve been fortunate to have many good friends and a handful of great friends. We all know the difference. You enjoy your good friends; you love your great friends. Good friends will console you when you are in troubled waters; great friends move into the lifeboat with you and start bailing. Between good friends one might routinely have more influence over the other; between great friends that influence flows back and forth and, given the power that comes with that influence, the one with the sway at that moment exercises it in such a way to insure that such power is never used to harm the other.

Manet & Morisot is the pictorial expression of a truly great friendship.

A WEE BIT OF BACKGROUND

Manet met Morisot while both were in the Louvre studying by painting the old Masters. Manet was nine years older than Morisot. He was already a well-known painter and she was still a student.

At first, she would sit for him as a model. (He painted her ten times.) History, so quick to wipe out the contributions of women, would relegate her to his muse. This is a great injustice to both artists.

While in his studio, they would discuss art and painting techniques. He was her guide and mentor in these early years. In that role, Manet acted with outrageous presumption when he took a brush to Morisot's painting, The Mother and Sister of the Artist, and painted over large sections of it while giving her advice for its submission to the revered Paris Salon. Morisot was furious as she had no time to make her own adjustments after Manet's intervention. That work was not available for loan to this exhibition. (Just as well.)

Manet could hardly be characterized as an Impressionist. His use of color – so much black – his emphasis on precision in his brushstrokes and his insistence on painting in the studio disqualifies him from that moniker. Moreover, all his life he sought to exhibit with the official (and officious) Paris Salon at Beaux-Arts.

Manet exhibited with the upstarts one time, in 1863, when his painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe [Luncheon on the Grass] was rejected by the official Salon. Yet, he had many good friends among the Impressionists: Monet, Renoir and Pissarro (and eventually one great friend as well).

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe [Luncheon in the Grass]

Morisot also exhibited with the Paris Salon. Then came that memorable turning point in art history, 1874, when the Impressionists began annual exhibitions. Morisot decided to exhibit at the Salon des Refusés in 1874, the first woman to do so and, notably, under her own name and not a pseudonym. Having cast her lot with the Impressionists, she continued to exhibit with them for a decade. (The 1874 exhibition is considered the birth of Impressionism. Monet’s Impression, Sunrise giving rise the movement’s name, coined contemptuously by the art critic, Louis Leroy, who lambasted Monet’s work, decrying that “wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.”)

MARISOT (coined by the modern French philosopher, Fabienne Brugère)

Good friends offer helpful advice; great friends influence us.

As you proceed through the exhibition, it is breathtakingly obvious when Morisot begins to influence Manet’s style. You see it clearly in his painting, Boating, which was painted (partially) outdoors. His color choices – blues and greens – are Impressionist standards. His use of black paint is limited to the ribbon in the woman’s hat and the boat’s rope. (After all, great friends may influence us but they don’t strip us of our essentials.) His brushstrokes became more fluid, beginning in 1872, with The Railway. You can picture Manet giddy with this newfound sense of freedom, ready to share this with his good friend and now sister-in-law. He had broken away from the restrictions of the Paris Salon. His loosened technique hit its peak in 1882 with A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. What would Manet do next? Sadly, this is an unanswered musing, as he died a year later.

Boating; The RaIlway and A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

Morisot, Summer’s Day – compare it to Boating above in subject, perspective and figure placement

Manet & Morisot shows two painters in a mind-meld. For almost a century after her death, Morisot was a footnote, relegated to the role of muse for Manet. Her work came under rigorous reevaluation beginning in the 1970s, through the efforts of feminists history scholars. This installation honors the intensity of their connection while also lifting Morisot out of Manet’s shadow.

Marisot were close friends who corresponded often, were passionate advocates for each other’s art and eventually in-laws. Current events also bonded them; both survived the 1870-71 Siege of Paris, staying behind in the city as many of their friends fled. (Like our COVID 🦠 friends)

Berthe Morisot Reclining

There may have been indications, flickers, of sexual tension between them in some of Manet’s early portraits (notably the suggestively slouchy “Berthe Morisot Reclining”) and a few tantalizing asides in Morisot’s letters to her sister. “Manet teases me incessantly, makes fun of my manners, and I end up finding that, if he were free, I’d be much likelier to fancy him than anyone else.” Yet, is the breath of our experience so paltry, our understanding of the heart so limited, that we cannot conceive of a genuine friendship between the sexes?

Like all great friends, Marisot’s love and respect for each other lasted. On her deathbed, in 1895 (a dozen years after Manet’s passing), she wrote in a letter to her daughter: “You shall tell M. Degas that if he founds a museum, he is to pick a Manet.”

FÉMINISME

Certainly, they tested each other’s limits, often resulting in bringing out the best in each other (as great friends do). While passing motifs back and forth (boating, balconies and bathing), Morisot was clearly commenting on the restriction she faced as a woman. Manet could visit cafes unaccompanied and paint figures in novel and shocking ways. In painting Suzon, the actual barmaid at the Folies-Bergère (holding a bowl of oranges), Manet suggests she is also available for purchase, just like the fruit and the bottles of alcohol. This is enforced as we look at her dejected face, forced to endure the unwelcome advances of a customer. In his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, the nude woman looks directly at us. She challenges the male gaze; her stare borders on impertinence.

Meanwhile, Morisot as a woman and a proper bourgeoise was limited to so-called appropriate spaces and subject matter: mainly interiors, gardens and parks. Morisot’s female figures generally are fully absorbed in a task. Even when the figure has no task, her eyes are downcast, as in Young Woman at her Window. Morisot is telling us that there is a whole world outside that window but that world is not meant for her or her model; their roles in society are circumscribed. Morisot painted this picture only months after she sat as Manet’s model in The Balcony.

In all the time that she sat as his model, are we really to imagine that they didn’t discuss these issues? Her painting is clearly in conversation with Manet’s work. In his painting the women gaze into the world. Why not? They have a man (or two) standing behind them, giving the women permission to imagine they can interact with that world. Morisot’s answer is a young woman staring at her fan, while outside her window the world passes her by.

In The Balcony, Morisot is the young woman on the left gazing into the future, as she sits next to Mme. Manet. Whereas, in her painting, Young Woman at Her Window, Morisot’s sister, Edma Pontillon, reflects the realities of the status of women in 1870 France.

I entitled this blog They Followed Each Other. If you take that literally, you are left with two people walking around in a circle. Only, it’s not the kind of circle where the two friends get nowhere. It’s a circle that has no beginning and no end. A circle where neither is the permanent leader and both can lead and can follow as they continue to discover new worlds together.

For more information on Manet & Morisot, click here.

My thanks to Karen Rosenberg / New York Times