Welcome to One Fine Showwhen the Observer highlights an exhibit that just opened at a museum outside of New York City, a place we know and love is already getting a lot of attention.
It sounds like audiences are looking forward to the summer sequel that was last year’s “Manet/Degas” show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. John Singer Sargent’s show had things that were just as good, but I doubt it was as popular, given the lack of frenemies narrative that was present in the previous show. Frenemies will always be big in America, a country where you always have to keep buying a bigger car so you don’t have to worry about crashing into your neighbor’s even bigger car.
The mural “Manet & Morisot,” a new exhibit at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, reminds us that Édouard Manet (1832-1883) and Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) had “the closest relationship of any two members of the Impressionist circle.” It is fair to say that it was not anarchy, but it was also not artists and muse, or master and student, as some of their contemporaries thought. The program examines the connections between their works by using 42 borrowed works from large clusters of institutions across the United States and France.
Manet and Morisot met at the Louvre in the late 1860s, where both often copied old masters. Shortly after meeting Berthe and her sister, Manet wrote to a friend, “It is troubling that they are not men, but as women, they can still achieve the purpose of painting by marrying each student and sowing discord in the camp of dotards.” Let’s call that a modern compliment, because he didn’t know how Berthe would help him move the magic with his hand.
Before long, she would become a top model The Balcony (1868-1869), with a rich narrative in which Morisot is the star. Someone is about to arrive, or so late that he has given up on coming—Morisot’s character is preoccupied with something else entirely, his eyes locked on something good or bad on the balcony.
He loved his foreign women. Morisot became a constant subject and friend. Manet’s praise of Port in Lorient (1869) in the studio he was working so hard that she gave him a job, much to his mother’s dismay, but the work shows his influence. The way the harbor reflects the sky and its surrounding walls provides just the right mix of fantasy and reality. There is even a dreamy woman who frames the scene.
This is not to say that his style was in any way based on his own. Manet was an influence on all the Impressionists, even if he wasn’t officially one himself. The pallor in Port in Lorient he would go on to describe his style, with one critic praising his “perfumed whiteness”. A Woman in Her Private House (1875-1880). His large, open strokes and subtle colors are shown throughout. You almost worry that if you sneeze, it will blow—a far cry from Manet’s well-executed intensity.
Manet’s death in 1883 left Morisot “broken,” he wrote to his sister: “I will never forget the old days of friendship and intimacy with him, while I asked him and his fascinating wisdom kept me awake during those long hours.” This was a fascinating relationship where both achieved a lot, their testimony is on canvas.
“Manet and Morisot“ is visible in the Legion of Honor until March 1, 2026.
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