{"id":14922,"date":"2025-10-20T23:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T23:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/14922\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T23:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T23:09:07","slug":"how-2-legendary-impressionist-painters-have-a-chat-at-sf-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/14922\/","title":{"rendered":"How 2 legendary impressionist painters have a chat at SF museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty years ago, Berkeley author Jeffrey Meyers<\/a> published \u201cImpressionist Quartet,\u201d<\/a> an interlocking biography exploring the \u201cintimate genius\u201d of painters Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt.<\/a><\/p>\n

Last fall, San Francisco\u2019s Legion of Honor museum<\/a> presented a splendid retrospective of Cassatt\u2019s work, touching on Degas\u2019 influence on the American artist making her name in Paris.<\/p>\n

This fall, the Legion follows up, and doubles up, with \u201cManet & Morisot,\u201d detailing the extensive artistic exchange between the two of them from the 1860s to the 1880s at a turning point in European painting.<\/p>\n

The exhibit, on view through March 1, takes a canny approach as it renews attention to Morisot\u2019s career, stature and influence. Pairing her paintings \u2014 more than half of the 45 works on display \u2014 with Manet\u2019s is not only logical but revealing. The museum calls it a \u201cconversation\u201d between the two.<\/p>\n

According to exhibit curator Emily A. Beeny, this is the first major exhibition dedicated to Manet and Morisot together. \u201cThis may come as a surprise,\u201d she says in a catalog essay, \u201csince theirs was the closest relationship between any two members of the Impressionist circle.\u201d<\/p>\n

They were friends and colleagues, painter and model and, eventually, family, after Morisot married Manet\u2019s brother, Eugene.<\/p>\n

The Legion of Honor exhibit makes a case for a shift in the expected relationship between a famous male artist and a lesser-known female. Exhibit texts argue that Morisot influenced Manet as much if not more than he influenced her.<\/p>\n

This reversal helps explain Manet\u2019s evolving style. Meyers\u2019 book quoted French philosopher Georges Bataille:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cHad it not been for Berthe Morisot, in whom he discovered the double enchantment of a painter\u2019s talents and a model\u2019s beauty, he might never have tried his hand at Impressionist painting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibit includes plenty of compare-and-contrast examples of Manet and Morisot\u2019s work, but it is more than a scholarly examination. Museum visitors may be thrilled just to stroll among dozens of Impressionist paintings, and many of Morisot\u2019s are true discoveries that haven\u2019t been reproduced on countless postcards and calendars.<\/p>\n

\"\u00c9douard\u00c9douard Manet’s 1868-’69 painting “The Balcony” depicts, among others, fellow artist Berthe Morisot (seated, at left). (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet the most famous picture on display is \u201cThe Balcony\u201d (1868-69), Manet\u2019s mysterious, nearly 6-foot-tall painting that included Morisot\u2019s image for the first of many times. And it\u2019s not \u201cimpressionistic\u201d at all.<\/p>\n

Most exhibits of the Impressionist circle focus on a single painter (\u201cMonet and Venice,\u201d for example, opens next March at the de Young Museum.) \u201cManet & Morisot,\u201d obviously, is a chance to see more than one artist\u2019s work on the gallery walls \u2014 and learn more about a painter like Morisot, underappreciated for decades.<\/p>\n

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was actually a founder of French Impressionism. She was born in Bourges, in central France, the third of a government official\u2019s four children. The family resettled in 1852 to Paris, where Berthe and two sisters began drawing lessons.<\/p>\n

Berthe and her sister Edma continued more advanced studies, copying old master paintings at the Louvre Museum, where in 1867 Berthe met Manet. Since both Morisot and Manet families were respectably upper-middle class, there was no problem in her sitting as a model for him.<\/p>\n

\"BertheBerthe Morisot’s “Woman at Her Toilette,” was one of a series of paintings she created depicting women dressing, combing their hair, and the like. (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)\u00a0<\/p>\n

She soon formed part of his astonishing art circle, which included Degas, Cezanne, Sisley, Monet and Renoir. Distinctively her own artist, she had nine paintings in the first Impressionist exhibit in 1874. (One of them, the placid out-of-doors \u201cReading,\u201d is a highlight of the Legion exhibit.)<\/p>\n

Beeny, the exhibit curator, points out that in the 1880s, Morisot \u201cunveiled a new body of work characterized by broad, open strokes: ribbons of pale color that dissolved form into touch.\u201d One contemporary critic said her pictures were \u201cready to vanish like a wisp of smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Legion\u2019s exhibit of paired paintings, Morisot\u2019s technique can be subtly distinctive. Manet\u2019s \u201cBefore the Mirror\u201d (1877) and her \u201cWoman at Her Toilette\u201d (1875-1880) both show a bare-shouldered woman, perhaps dressing or undressing. Morisot\u2019s model seems to merge with the background in a scene the curator describes as \u201cpoetic indeterminacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scenes of Paris, painted from the same viewpoint, offer more contrast. Manet\u2019s \u201cView of the Exposition Universelle\u201d (1867) is crowded with figures that look almost pasted to the surface. Her \u201cView of Paris from the Trocadero\u201d (1871-72) seems to be scrubbed clean except for a few observers.<\/p>\n

Both artists are represented by landscapes, seascapes, portraits and family groupings. The exhibit\u2019s first gallery is heavy with Manet\u2019s dramatic portraits of Morisot. One, \u201cBerthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets\u201d (1872) is described by the curator as \u201ctransfixing,\u201d in contrast to the benign title.<\/p>\n

Morisot\u2019s 1885 self portrait, the final image in the exhibit, has the same intensity. The curator describes her as being in \u201cvigorous midlife, her hair dusted with gray, her expression resolute.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Morisot showed the picture at an exhibition in 1893.<\/p>\n

By the time of her death in 1895 she had rolled up the canvas and stored it in a cupboard. The exhibit text, often asking questions about these artists\u2019 attitudes, asks one more about Morisot: \u201cWhat did it mean for an artist still best known for appearing in another\u2019s work to paint her own likeness?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018MANET & MORISOT\u2019<\/p>\n

Through: March 1<\/p>\n

Where: Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park,\u00a034th Avenue and Clement Street, San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday<\/p>\n

Admission: $20-$35; famsf.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Originally Published: October 20, 2025 at 3:53 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty years ago, Berkeley author Jeffrey Meyers published \u201cImpressionist Quartet,\u201d an interlocking biography exploring the \u201cintimate genius\u201d of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2308,184,7,967,181,971,2311,101,103,102,104,106,105,420],"class_list":{"0":"post-14922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-bay-area","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-lifestyle","14":"tag-museums","15":"tag-san-francisco","16":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","17":"tag-san-francisco-news","18":"tag-sf","19":"tag-sf-headlines","20":"tag-sf-news","21":"tag-things-to-do"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}