A new exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art pairs two friends’ paintings side by side. In that proximity, viewers can appreciate the similarities and differences between work by Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot.
Manet was a studio painter who revised his work while Morisot preferred to paint outdoors - or en plein air. Morisot posed for many of Manet’s portraits, but she was not merely a muse who also painted as some “old-fashioned art history” might suggest, said Heather Lemonedes Brown, the museum’s curator of Modern European Art.
“This exhibition takes, I think, a very fresh and different approach looking at the dialogue between the two,” she said.
The two artists knew each other well and “Manet & Morisot” explores how they both influenced each other’s work. And it’s notable Morisot is getting her due.
“A professional woman artist in the 1870s and 1880s was extremely rare. Women did not have the same opportunities as male artists did,” Brown said. “That a woman artist of the 1870s could inspire and even have an effect upon Manet, the father of modern painting, I think is a bold interpretation.”
Evolving influences
Manet can be credited for Morisot’s interest in adding figures to her landscape work while he in turn later adds the Parisian woman to his paintings, borrowing from her subject matter, Brown said.
“They both shared this desire to do something new and important and memorable and significant with their art,” she said.
Manet was challenging the establishment by not painting mythological or Biblical themes, and Morisot was likely blacklisted from France’s state-sponsored exhibit for sitting for Manet’s paintings and associating with him, Brown said.
Morisot joined with other modern painters depicting aspects of daily life like Edgar Degas and Claude Monet and exhibited art elsewhere. A critic introduced the term “impressionist,” and the artists eventually adopted the name.
“Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot had what I think many would agree is the closest relationship of any two artists within the Impressionist circle,” Brown said.
This exhibition, organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art, is the first to focus on the two as a pair. It’s on view in Cleveland through July 5.
Lasting impressions
Édouard Manet incorporates Morisot’s loose brushwork in the dress of the woman in the foreground of his “Boating.”
The woman was actually painted over the boat as a later revision, and Manet’s use of Morisot-like brushwork suggests he wanted to demonstrate he was up to date with evolving styles and subject matter, Brown said.
Another pairing of their works in the show has both painters focused on a woman in front of a mirror.
Looking at the two works at the same time, Morisot’s appears more effortless.
“It's one thing when you do the thing that comes naturally to you, it shows. And it's another thing when you try to do something and you can do it, you can master it, but it takes some effort,” Brown said.
Manet and Morisot were not just creative colleagues but family. Morisot married Manet’s younger brother, Eugène, and apparently the older brother played matchmaker.
Another pairing in the exhibit features Morisot’s daughter, Julie. The girl appears more staged in Manet’s depiction and is seemingly at play in Morisot’s painting.
After Manet died at 51 in 1883, Morisot and her husband purchased a lot of his work. She would have constantly seen his art amongst her own paintings in her home, Brown said.
“I think the lessons he taught her, informally through dialogue and what she learned by watching him and even in his responses to her work and what he did, continued to feed her intellectually and artistically,” she said.
