Manet and Morisot: rivals or lovers?

In recent art exhibition catalogues, curators have made some absurd claims: Mary Cassatt was a labourer, Gustave Caillebotte was queer and British art didn’t exist until foreigners invented it.  But these trendy theses were soon demolished by all the paintings in their own shows.

Manet & Morisot, edited by Emily Beeny and 7 others (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2025, 352p, $75), an exceptionally handsome and well illustrated exhibition catalogue, proposes yet another unconvincing thesis.  The writers turn the exhibition into an unequal sexual competition and dubiously claim that in their volume “the whole story of Impressionism has been rewritten with its two women champions at its heart.”  It maintains that in the early 1880s “Manet began to follow Morisot’s example, emulating her choice of subjects, her high-key colors, and, most especially, her rapid, fluttering brushstrokes.”  But its attempt to “reverse gender hierarchies” offers no persuasive evidence that the changes in Manet’s late style were influenced by Morisot.  In fact, as one writer points out, Morisot was “steeped in the influence of Manet”.

Some contributors in this book emphasize the painters’ “differences in format, brushstroke, palette and the artist’s thinking” and state that Manet was not “indebted to Morisot in handling and subject.”  The influence of Impressionism on Manet’s late art came from painting side by side with his close friend Claude Monet, the leader of  that innovative movement.  Contributors confirm that the encounter with Monet “marked a dramatic role reversal, recasting Manet as a student—at least in terms of plein-air painting.”

Like other artists from Rembrandt to Renoir, Manet’s style became less linear and distinct, more cloudy and blurred, when crippling illness reduced his control of the brush.  By then he had created great works and didn’t need Morisot to tell him how to choose a subject or paint a picture.  She did “not want anyone to compare her doubting portraits of herself with the acclaimed images Manet had made of her.”

Morisot is a very good painter, but the curators don’t increase our understanding by inflating her reputation and trying to equate her with an infinitely more vivid and interesting artist.  Her placid landscapes and domestic interiors are not equal to Manet’s ambitious and dramatically intense masterpieces: Luncheon on the Grass (1863), Olympia (1863) and The Bar at the Folies Bergère (1882). This book, declaring that “Morisot’s facility as a painter surpasses Manet’s,” mistakenly portrays Morisot fighting above her weight.

Edouard Manet – Olympia (1863)

Three major Manet paintings appear in the San Francisco exhibition, which will travel on to Cleveland.  In The Balcony (1869) the tall distinguished-looking gentleman (the painter Antoine Guillemet) with a high wing collar, bright blue necktie and cigarette smoking in his left hand dominates the center of the pyramidal composition.  Morisot is seated, the violinist Fanny Claus is standing.  The three figures are framed by the horizontal railing and the green shutters which, with Claus’ folded umbrella, have subtly different shades of green.

Edouard Manet – The Balcony (1869)

Morisot and Claus both wear white dresses and clasp their hands; Morisot’s billowing gown has ruffled shoulders and sleeves, Claus’ gown is narrower and simpler; Morisot’s feet are hidden, Claus’ foot shows beneath her dress; Morisot is bare-headed with dangling dark hair, Claus wears a hat with a huge white flower; Morisot holds a closed fan facing right with bare hands, Claus holds a furled umbrella facing left with gloved hands; Morisot wears a choker with a large gold medallion, Claus’ neck is bare; Claus’ expression is blank, even fatuous, and her heavy floral headpiece is slightly absurd.  By contrast Morisot, with wild curls on her forehead and black hair flowing down her shoulders, has large eyes, sensuous lips, tense fingers and an anxious troubled expression.  Manet’s Japanese dog appears beneath her chair.  The shadowy figure of a boy (Léon Leenhoff) in the left background, almost hidden and carrying a pitcher, serves the guests like a little Ganymede with the gods.  The still mysterious father of Léon, Suzanne Manet’s son, was either Edouard Manet or Edouard’s father.

The Railway (1873) portrays the busy Gare Saint-Lazare station.  The seated mother, with flowery hat, flowing red hair and dark blue buttoned-up dress, faces the spectator and holds an open book next to her ruffled sleeves.  The standing child, looking at the railroad with her back to the spectator, has her hair bound with a black ribbon above her bare neck, and a white and light-blue dress that reaches to her knees.  The child grasps the railing with her right hand and seems to be reaching out to her mother with her pale extended left arm.  The two figures are framed by the horizontal and vertical railings.  The small sleeping puppy on the mother’s lap suggests the way she once held her baby daughter.  The train is obscured by a cloud of steam, but Manet shows part of the track, switches and signalman’s cabin.  The tall entrance of his own noisy vibrating studio is close to the far side of the rumbling railway.  The little girl who looks away from the viewers makes them want to see her face as well as the billowing smoke and rushing steel that she’s looking at.  The powerful thrust of the train contrasts with the tranquil observation of the child and the mother who calmly ignores the mechanical chaos.

Edouard Manet – The Railway (1873)

In Boating (1874), a tranquil summertime escape from the busy life on the shore, a gentle wake ruffles the quietly flowing water that surrounds the sailors on three sides.  The woman reclining in the boat wears a white hat secured against the breeze by a black ribbon and a white veil.  The curving blue stripes in her dress, with a high thin waist tightened by a belt, echo the gentle movement of the water.  The virile mustached burly boatman, Manet’s masculine ideal who dominates the center of the painting, resembles the dominant man in The Balcony.  He has a drooping moustache and muscular arms, wears a yellow straw hat whose blue ribbon matches the colour of the sea, white T-shirt and trousers, and firmly grips the rudder with his left hand.  Part of the sail that propels them, secured by a line tied to the wooden pole, appears in the top right corner.  The painting suggests both stasis in the boat and movement in the water.

Édouard Manet – Boating (1874)

The highlight of this exhibition includes some of Manet’s greatest works.  His six major portraits of Morisot in the 1870s, when she was aged 29 to 33, convey six distinct moods and expressions (which I’ve underlined).  She appears pensive or melancholy, seductive behind a veil or fan, sensually swathed in heavy furs, stricken by illness and grief.  Morisot experienced historical and emotional upheavals when Manet painted her portraits.  She remained in Paris during the siege of the city in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, feared for Manet and her brother who were serving in the army, lost all her paintings when she left her house and mourned the death of her father.  Manet was obsessed with her striking beauty, magnetic presence and attractive elegance that perfectly matched his own.  Morisot’s tragic appearance, restrained energy and radiant intensity suggest the sexual tensions and inhibitions of the handsome married man and his charming unmarried model and muse.

In contrast to Manet’s idealised and animated portraits, Morisot seems rather plain and withdrawn in her dull, awkward, stiffly-posed contemporary photographs.  Like a camera, Manet’s portraits move from a calm long shot in Repose to an intense close up in Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets.  Manet usually portrays women with carefully coiffed and soigné hair, and women’s hair is always neatly arranged in Morisot’s portraits.  But in his paintings her characteristically loose hair suggests their intimacy, her unleashed passion, his love tribute—and even the first stage of undress as she removes her bonnet.

Edouard Manet – Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets (1872)

Morisot poses in Repose (1870) with “scandalous lassitude.”  Seen from a distance in a tight-waisted billowing white dress, she’s seated with her arms extended and fingers spread gracefully between her handkerchief and the star-shaped indentations of the sofa buttons.  She’s holding a fan and wearing a white dress, with one white stocking and black shoe showing beneath the wide hem.  Her long dark hair hangs down to her shoulders and her narrow waist beneath her full bust is secured by a black sash.  Wide-  eyed and rosy cheeked, she has fallen into a melancholic reverie.

Édouard Manet – Repose (1871)

In Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets (1872) she wears her typical high-crowned black hat, black scarf and black dress—with her white blouse open at the neck and pointing to her corsage of violets.  She confronts the viewer directly, close up and filling the frame of the picture.  The ribbons hanging from her hat accentuate her scattered strands of hair.  Her pale face and delicate features are half in shadow, half in light.  Her brown irises are unusually large, her nose is delicate, her lips faintly smile.  Her intense dramatic expression shows attention, involvement and profound complicity.  A contributor to this catalogue notes “the palpable excitement of this electrifying encounter, conjured with rapt and sensuous delight.”  The violets in her corsage and the bouquet of violets in the small painting that Manet gave her are a symbolic declaration of his love.

Berthe Morisot with a Muff (1872) conveys a wintry mood.  She’s enveloped in a luxurious dark fur, with her hands plunged into a deep fur muff.  Her tall feathered hat and flowing coat, in a strong pyramidal form, suggest her forceful character.  She’s seated in three-quarter view, with long strands of hair following the curving plumes in her hat, flowing onto her forehead and touching her left eyebrow.  Her handsome nose rises above her sensuous, slightly parted lips.  Her expression is slightly nervous, as if she were trying to escape from the confinement of her thick animal-hide. Manet’s Isabelle Lemonnier with a Muff (1880) is completely different from Berthe Morisot with a Muff.  Isabelle is conventional, her fur coat is merely a covering, her face is puffy, her eyebrows raised, her expression dull.

Édouard Manet – Berthe Morisot with a Muff
(1871–72)

Berthe Morisot Reclining (1873), which Manet cut back to a close up, shows her figure dressed in black, extending to the right and out of the frame.  Her dark hair is parted in the middle, reaching below her eyes and touching her ears.  Her lips are full, her head slightly tilted.  The thick ribbon around her throat, above her white chest and her laced V-neck gown, seems to be restraining her.  She’s calm and thoughtful, as if pondering her future and her fate.  In the best chapter of the book Isolde Pludermacher mentions the mood of “seduction” three times in one paragraph as well as Morisot’s beguiling assurance, subtle smile and erotic tension.  She calls Reclining the “most daring of the series in its transgression of the standards of decorum.”

Edouard Manet – Portrait de Berthe Morisot étendue (1873)

Morisot experienced long bouts of melancholy.  Berthe Morisot in Mourning (for her father, 1874) portrays her with theatrical intensity, as if she were a tragic heroine in a play by Racine.  In this sympathetic portrait, set against a dark swirling background, she faces the viewer seated on a gold-flecked chair, wears a tall black hat tilted down on her forehead and is shrouded in a loose black garment.  A black ribbon is wound around her bare white arm and a black gloved hand supports her lowered chin.  Her hair is loose and disheveled on her forehead.  Her large eyes swollen with tears are asymmetrical, far apart and troubled, her features blurred and distorted.  In this turbulent, extremely emotional picture she’s overwhelmed by profound grief.  The expressionistic slashes of paint on her face reinforce her sorrow and anguish.

Édouard Manet – Berthe Morisot in mourning (1874)

In Berthe Morisot with a Fan (1874) she’s seated, looking to the left, still dressed in black but no longer mournful.  She has dark hair, eyebrows and dress.  Caught in a dramatic moment, she raises her left hand and extends her fingers (the little one curled) from her lacy sleeves, as if she were searching for an elusive meaning outside the frame of the picture.  Her gesture, both questioning and emphatic, resembles a conductor about to lead an orchestra.  Her choker, fingers and engagement ring form a binding circle, and her raised finger suggests hesitancy about marrying Edouard’s younger brother Eugène.  Her refined, vibrant features are as lovely as ever, her expression is intelligent and alert.  Manet perfectly captures and reveals her irresistible beauty, her thoughts—and thoughts about him.

Édouard Manet – Berthe Morisot with a Fan (1874)

As the portraits suggest, Manet’s relations with Morisot were intense, emotional and complex.  She was jealous of Manet’s endless modeling sessions with his only pupil, Eva Gonzalès.  Morisot’s mother and sister often mocked Suzanne Manet’s strong Dutch accent and obese figure, suggesting that she was an unworthy consort of the great artist. They said “he must have felt a terrible shock on seeing how she had filled out in the countryside”, and was a notable contrast to the slim and elegant Berthe.

The numerous comments about Manet’s stunning images are revealing.  Morisot herself noted that his elegant, intimate portraits have inspired “the epithet femme fatale circulating among connoisseurs,” an expression that “evokes the image of a woman at once seductive and dangerous.”  The poet Paul Valéry described “the shadowy and magnetic force of her gaze.”

Morisot’s letters to her sister Edma describe her desire to pose for him and their mutual attraction: “Once again, Manet finds me not too ugly and would like to have me back as a model.  In the end, out of boredom, I suggested it to him myself. . . . I’ll never forget the old days of friendship and intimacy with him and when his ever-delightful wit kept me alert for those long hours. . . . His nature compelled everyone’s friendship. . . . If he were free, I’d be much likelier to fancy him than someone else.”  Her mother told Berthe that Manet “gave himself the title of permanent admirer and ruled that one must come to terms with it.”  His portraits delighted in her unruly tresses, lent a “strange frisson to every nuance of look and dress” and were enlivened by erotic interest.

Isolde Pludermacher emphasizes the “powerful bond between painter and model,” the “increasing closeness of the two artists,” the “daring scenes in the ardent portraits,” the “mischievous game of seduction,” the “reciprocal attraction,” her “ardent gaze” and his “fantasy of undressing her.”  She concludes that Manet’s Bust of a Nude Brunette (1872) portraying “a young, dark-haired woman with an ardent gaze wearing a medallion suspended from a velvet ribbon around her neck . . .  might have been a fantasized image of Berthe Morisot.”

Despite all this massive evidence, the editor Emily Beeny refuses to draw the obvious conclusion and categorically asserts, “There can have been no question of a sexual relationship.”  Instead of dogmatically assuming how Morisot would behave, it would be far better to look carefully at the portraits.  Beeny shows scant understanding of overwhelming sexual emotions and ignores Blaise Pascal’s wise perception: “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point” (“The heart has its reasons that reason doesn’t know”).  Anna Karenina and many other 19th-century novels describe haut-bourgeois women engaging in illicit love affairs.  Morisot was not, like Mary Cassatt, an ironclad spinster.  Respectable women did not always act with absolute propriety.  They were often carried away by powerful feelings that could easily transcend conventional codes of proper behaviour.

Manet’s portraits and Morisot’s letters to Edma strongly suggest that they were lovers.  Manet admired her art, relished her talk and fell in love with her.  Often alone together in his studio, they had ample time for intimacy.  He burned her letters when she married in order to hide their secrets and to mark the inevitable end of  their intimate liaison.  Morisot stopped posing for—and sleeping with—Manet when, with his encouragement, she married his younger brother Eugène: Edouard Mark II.  She married his brother because she couldn’t marry Edouard.  Her vicarious marriage kept Edouard in the family and was the next best thing to marrying the great love of her life.

Berthe’s last plea to her teenaged daughter Julie Manet, one of the most poignant letters ever written, reveals her sympathetic character.  In a rare instance of a parent mourning the child’s loss of herself, her last altruistic thoughts were not on her own impending death, but the effect of her death on her daughter:

My little Julie, I love you as I die; I shall still love you even when I am dead; I beg you not to cry, this parting was inevitable.  I had hoped to live until you were married.  Work and be good as you always have been; you have not caused me one sorrow in your little life. You have beauty, wealth; make good use of them.  Do not cry; I love you more than I can tell you.

Jeffrey Meyers published Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt in 2005.  Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway appeared in November 2025, The Biographer’s Quest will be out in April 2026.

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