Originating in France in the 19th century, the Impressionist movement remains one of the most popular eras in visual art. Now, new scholarship emerges in the first major exhibition dedicated to the formative friendship between French painters Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot. Manet & Morisot is the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the friendship and creative exchange between two influential members of the Impressionist circle.
A collaboration of friends and colleagues
Manet and Morisot were friends, colleagues, and family after Morisot’s marriage to Manet’s brother in 1874. Public and private masterpieces on display will tell a personalized story of creative collaboration told through portraits. Their story has most often been told through the portraits Manet painted of Morisot between 1868 and 1874 when she was a muse and model, and before she became an esteemed peer.
Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets, (1872), is a figurative study of darkness and light. The painting features Morisot in profile, her face a loose collection of brushstrokes depicting a gentle gaze toward the viewer. Considered one of Manet’s masterpieces, his signature flat surfaces of color and lively, brisk brushstrokes are evident here, the style that ultimately represented a revolutionary step forward in modern art.
Though Morisot looked to Manet for inspiration in the beginning of her career, by the mid-1870s Manet began to follow Morisot’s example, adopting her subject matter, bright colors, and fluttering brushstrokes.
One of Manet’s most famous works, Luncheon on the Grass, (1863), caused a scandal and was rejected by the more traditional Paris Salon. In this landscape, the flat surfaces of color were deemed “unfinished” and also shocking in subject, since it illustrated a scene of a nude female picnicker with two clothed men.
Berthe Morisot was one of the only female founding members of the Impressionist movement. As a Parisian woman born into the upper middle class, it was commonplace for females to be taught the arts as a genteel accomplishment. Morisot’s skills as a plein-air painter won her an influential prominence in the Impressionist group, which mounted its first independent exhibition in 1874. Though she looked to Manet for inspiration in the beginning of her career, by the mid-1870s Manet began to follow Morisot’s example, adopting her subject matter, bright colors, and fluttering brushstrokes. By 1880, Morisot debuted a looser, sketchy approach in her paintings. Woman at Her Toilette (1875–80) shows a woman facing a mirror and fixing her hair in front of a painterly wallpaper design that merges with the subject’s dress as though she’s disappearing in an active cross-hatching of paint. Her face turns away toward a small still-life in gestural brushstrokes that include a vase and flowers.
The four seasons
Impressionism represented a departure from realism by focusing on the fleeting effects of light and a personal perception of the beauty of nature. As Morisot’s palette shifted and Manet refashioned himself as a painter of elegant women, the two artists reunited to collaborate on a series of paintings in which Morisot and Manet depicted the four seasons of the year as fashionable women. Morisot contributed Summer (1878) and Winter (1880), while Manet created Spring and Autumn (1881).
A dialogue beyond death
Manet & Morisot concludes with a section exploring Morisot’s collection of her brother-in-law’s work, and how living with Manet’s paintings allowed her to continue their artistic dialogue even after his death.
These celebrated painters had the closest relationship between any two artists in the Impressionist circle, and their dynamic influenced the trajectory of modern art. “The friendship between these two great artists — collaborative and competitive, playful and charged — really did have a determining effect on the course of art history,” said Emily A. Beeny, FAMSF specialist in French paintings and drawings of the 17th through 19th centuries. “Its story is written in their pictures. Considering them side by side, we watch it all unfold: their shared interests and struggles, their mutual influence and understanding.”
‘Manet and Morisot’ will be on display at the Legion of Honor from Oct. 11 through March 1, 2026.