Installation view of “Manet & Morisot” at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, 2025. Photograph by Gary Sexton. Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
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At the beginning of October, the Legion of Honor unveiled a new exhibition exploring the work and friendship between iconic painters: Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot. Manet & Morisot is the first major exhibition to explore the friendship and artist exchange between the 19th-century painters known for their influences on the Impressionist movement.
Manet and Morisot became friends while living in Paris in the late 19th century, and Morisot even married Manet’s brother. Manet is well-known for painting a series of portraits of Morisot between 1868 and 1874, but the exhibition dives deeper into how both painters influenced each other’s works over the course of their friendship.
Installation view of “Manet & Morisot” at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, 2025. Photograph by Gary Sexton. Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
“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, the Chief Curator of the Legion of Honor. “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.”
The exhibition features numerous masterpieces loaned to the Legion of Honor from various prestigious art museums to create the exhibit. While Manet was friends with many future impressionist painters, such as Morisot, his work was never shown in an impressionist salon. He is often referred to as the “father of modern art” for his painting style, which became incredibly influential. Morisot was the only female founding member of the Impressionist movement, and she showed her work in the first Impressionist salon. She would show her work in 7 of the eight Impressionist exhibitions.
The exhibition will be open until March 1, 2026 at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. You can learn more and buy tickets here.