Visiting an art museum is one thing—and usually a joy—but a well-curated special exhibit that focuses on art you’re already familiar can not only make exciting memories, but give you a new understanding or two.
The Manet & Morisot exhibition, at the Cleveland Museum of Art until late July, did that for me; if you have an opportunity before it’s gone, I’d recommend a trip to Cleveland.
The exhibition focuses on the connections between two of the leading Impressionists—Edouard Manet, often thought of, along with Monet, as leader of the movement, and Berthe Morisot, the only women among the founders of the group.
For some, Morisot has been best-known as the subject of nearly a dozen paintings by Manet. In part because of her gender, her work has had less attention and has often been thought of as a follower of her brother-in-law Manet. The Manet & Morisot exhibit shows that clearly was not the case; one of its central themes is their influence on each other’s styles and subjects.
They first met in the late 1860s, at the Louvre, where Morisot and her sister Edma, already professionals, were copying master paintings as part of their training as painters; Manet, in his mid-30s, was ten years older and already well-established.
It was the beginning of a close friendship that lasted until Manet’s death; some even speculate they may have been lovers early on.
All Manet’s paintings of Morisot are from the first few years; he never painted her again after she married his brother Eugene in 1874, and they burned their early correspondence—but the two families continued close, personally and artistically.
Manet: Berthe Morisot with a Muff (1871) / Manet: Berthe Morisot with a Bunch of Violets (1872)
The Morisot sisters’ careers took different directions in marriage; Edma married a navy officer in 1869, and at his insistence, gave up her career to follow the expected path for upper middle-class women; Berthe’s husband, on the other hand, encouraged and supported her work—unusual for a man of his time and class.
The two seascapes above are an opportunity to see their separate ways: Manet is focuses on a multitude of characters and their activities, while Morisot shares an ‘impression’ of the scene, in which the people are hinted and even the ships are fewer. Morisot’s was swiftly worked, possibly from a hotel window; Manet worked, sometimes for months, on making his studio paintings look as if painted ‘en plein air.’
Another pair shows more differences and not just in artistic style. Manet’s foreshortened view of an 1867 World Fair in Paris is seen in simpler form in Morisot’s view; between the two were France’s humiliating defeat in 1870, followed by the Paris Commune and the violence of its suppression.
Morisot’s 1869 painting of The Harbor at Lorient was admired by Manet; she gave it to him as a gift. It may have helped open a new subject for Manet: women in white dresses outdoors. This one, by the way, is Edma Morisot.
The two outdoor scenes above show a shift for Manet not only in subject but in color palette, closer to Morisot’s. Edma is the woman in both paintings; the man is Morisot’s brother. Manet’s Edma looks out of the painting, while in Morisot’s she looks down. In recent X-rays, it’s become apparent that she was originally looking out; Morisot redid the eyes before showing the picture. In general, Morisot’s subjects are more inward-looking and private, possibly a reflection of women’s expected role.
That can be seen also in her 1869 Young Woman at her Window. It was one of Morisot’s first figure paintings, and Manet told her it was a “masterpiece.”
Here’s another example of back-and-forth between the two. In 1871, Morisot painted a mother and child posed on a balcony, with the child looking into the distance. For them, we are not there. Manet followed the formula with The Railway (1872-3), which has the child looking down at a passing train, while the mother looks our way, bringing us into the occasion. And then, a year later, Morisot used the basic structure again for In a Villa by the Sea.
Again, a theme reprised, but in quite different mood. Manet’s 1876 Boating engages with the audience through the man’s eyes; this time, in Lake in the Bois du Boulogne (1879) eyes are open, but the social and sexual tension are gone. Manet’s fluttery strokes in the woman’s dress, meant to look like quick outdoor painting, were actually hours in the studio.
The exhibit also includes a pair of Morisot still life paintings, Dahlias (1876) and Apple and Soup Tureen (1877). Both Manet and Morisot were skilled at still life, but neither spent much time at it, and Morisot only twice showed a still life in exhibition. The reason may have been that still life was not considered a serious subject and only suitable for amateurs; a reviewer wrote that “Since one need not have drawn for long at the Academy, to paint the corner of a table with a cooking pot, women do reasonably well with these housekeeping pictures.”
By the very late 1870s, life and work took new directions for both. Morisot gave birth to her daughter Julie in 1878, and after a pause in her painting for a few months returned with a freer hand and what some called ‘iridescent color.’ Manet, already ill and four years from his death, painted more chic upper-middle-class women, a regular subject for Morisot. His work in this period also shows a freer, sketchier hand.
Of the two paintings below, Manet’s is the earlier, but he only showed it after Morisot’s was seen at the Impressionists’ Fifth Exhibition in 1879.
Two quite domestic scenes by Morisot show her family maid, nanny and model, Paisie, whose surname has been lost. Young Woman Knitting is from 1881; the second is from 1885 and is more a watercolor sketch than a fully-realized painting.
The Four Seasons, below, was a joint project; there’s no record of which of the two had the idea. Morisot showed her two, Summer and Winter, the two right-hand pictures, in 1880. Manet started a bit later and completed Spring, top left) in 1881; Autumn was unfinished at his death and was completed by a student.
Morisot depicted a friend’s daughter in a hat in 1878; Manet’s hat picture is titled At the Milliner’s. Left unfinished at his death, the woman’s dress seems a bit risqué for a shopping picture.
Manet admired Morisot’s skills with pastels, and as his illness made it harder and harder for him to work with oils, he began using them himself for a number of late works, including this portrait of Claire Campbell. From 1878 on, he made about 90 pastels, nearly all portraits of women.
Another pair of of-the-times paintings: both about 1879-80, Manet’s young reads at an outdoor café, not yet an acceptable place for unaccompanied women of Manet and Morisot’s class; Morisot’s fairly similar composition is at home, and sewing rather than reading.
But one subject the two shared and painted in the same settings: Morisot’s daughter, Julie Manet. This first painting, made in 1881 at the home of the doctor who was treating Manet, is a break from Morisot’s usual style. Julie and the nanny Paisie are very present, but the background has become almost abstract; the corners are unpainted.
A pair of depictions made possibly on the same day in 1882 show Julie playing in sand in the garden with a watering can. Morisot’s is complete; Manet’s is more of a sketch; the day was one of Julie’s memories of her uncle, who died a few months later; she said that her mother was sorry he hadn’t finished it.
Julie appears again four years later, now eight years old, in this tender scene with her father. The Lesson in the Garden not only shows further evolution of her style and her ability to convey a relationship and emotion even though the figures are a very small portion of the painting, it also reflects an unusual relationship; men of Eugene’s class were not expected to be close to their children, especially daughters.
Manet died in April 1883. Morisot wrote to Edma that “These last days have been punishing… a long-standing friendship that bound me to Edouard, a whole past, our youth, our work, all collapsing, and you will understand that I am broken.”
She and Eugene were major collectors of Manet’s work, and bought more at the sale of his studio contents the next year. Images of his work appear often in the background of her interior paintings; in the 1890 Before the Mirror you can see an image of Berthe Morisot Reclining in the upper left corner in the mirror.
Despite the blow of Manet’s death, Morisot’s work continued and continued to evolve. The painting above is moving past what had become ‘traditional’ impressionism; her work shows some of the same directions of change visible in work by Van Gogh and Cezanne as well as a continuation. The 1885 self-portrait below might almost be a summary of the artist in her mid-40s and mid-career.
In the late 1880s, she continued to experiment with new media, including drypoint engraving, at the urging of Mary Cassatt. The Drawing Lesson, below, is a self-portrait with Julie.
Eugene Manet died in 1891; Morisot died four years later at 54 of pneumonia contracted while nursing Julie through the same disease.
