An exhibition examining the creative dialogue between two of the 19th century’s most significant artists is now on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “Manet & Morisot,” organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the museum, marks the first exhibition dedicated to pairing the work of Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot side by side.

Curator Heather Lemonedes Brown described the show as taking “a very fresh and different approach” to exploring the artistic exchange between the two painters. While Manet worked primarily in his studio, Morisot favored painting outdoors, en plein air. Morisot frequently posed for Manet’s portraits, yet the exhibition positions her as far more than a muse. Brown noted that “a professional woman artist in the 1870s and 1880s was extremely rare,” and argued that Morisot’s loose brushwork and focus on Parisian women eventually shaped Manet’s later work. In one pairing, Manet’s depiction of a woman’s dress in his 1874–76 painting “Boating” shows him adopting a technique that came naturally to Morisot.

The two artists shared what Brown called “the closest relationship of any two artists within the Impressionist circle.” Together, along with Degas and Monet, they were labeled Impressionists after a critic coined the term. Their personal lives also became intertwined: Morisot later married Manet’s younger brother, Eugène, with the older brother apparently serving as matchmaker. The exhibition closes with Morisot’s self-portrait, in which small flowers on her smock, according to Brown, “read like military medals” — a symbol of hard-won recognition in the male-dominated art world of her era. The show runs through July 5, 2026.

Source: WVXU / Cleveland Museum of Art