The Cleveland Museum of Art is presenting an exhibition placing the works of Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot in direct conversation, running through July 5. Organized jointly by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Cleveland Museum of Art, the show is described as the first major exhibition to focus on the two artists as a pair.

Curator Heather Lemonedes Brown, the museum’s curator of Modern European Art, noted the exhibition takes “a very fresh and different approach looking at the dialogue between the two.” Manet worked primarily in his studio and frequently revised his compositions, while Morisot favored painting outdoors. Despite those contrasting methods, both pursued similarly ambitious goals for their work. Morisot regularly modeled for Manet’s portraits but was considerably more than a subject: Brown emphasized that “a woman artist of the 1870s could inspire and even have an effect upon Manet, the father of modern painting.” Morisot ultimately married Manet’s younger brother, Eugène, and after Manet’s death in 1883 she continued engaging with his work from pieces she and her husband had acquired.

Among the featured works is Manet’s “Boating” (1874–76), in which his application of loose brushwork reflects his engagement with Morisot’s technique. The exhibition concludes with a Morisot self-portrait in which Brown reads the small flowers on her smock as “military medals,” suggesting a painter who “fought in the wars, as it were, in the art world, and she has won herself recognition on her own standing.” The Cleveland Museum of Art is located at 11150 East Boulevard.

Source: Ideastream Public Media