Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot Meet as Equals

"Manet & Morisot at the Legion of Honor is a somewhat scholarly exhibition on the lives, work, and friendship of two eminent French 19th-century artists. While it sets out to rescue Berthe Morisot from a long-held assumption that she owed her art to the influence - even guidance - of Édouard Manet, the show is far from an academic or revisionist experience. Instead, after seeing their work compared and contrasted across a handful of galleries, the word that comes most immediately to mind is "pleasure.""

"The two first met in the mid-1860s at the Louvre, where artists often made copies after works in the collection. Berthe was there with her older sister, Edma, also an artist, accompanied by their mother as their necessary chaperone. (As a man, Manet did not, of course, require a chaperone.) Though he was married, nearly a decade her senior, and already known for scandalous paintings - see "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" and "Olympia" (both 1863) - they struck up a friendship."

An exhibition at the Legion of Honor juxtaposes the lives, work, and friendship of Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet, combining scholarly intent with pleasurable viewing. The show challenges the long-held assumption that Morisot owed her art to Manet's influence or guidance while presenting both artists' paintings side by side. Manet remains celebrated as a pivotal figure in Modernism, yet Morisot's paintings demonstrate independent strength and vitality alongside his. The two artists first met at the Louvre in the mid-1860s; Morisot later posed in Manet's The Balcony (1868), a moment that encouraged labeling her as student and muse despite her own accomplishments.

Read at Hyperallergic