Julie Manet as Champion & Collector

Revisiting Manet and Morisot

Julie Manet with her father, Eugène Manet in the Garden of Bougival» (1881) Berthe Morisot.

Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée. Musings, your idiosyncratic guide to Paris and art. I’ve just returned from my annual two month visit to San Francisco and as jet lagged as I am now, I’ll wait until next week to share my reflections on what it was like to be in San Francisco at this moment. Today, because Franny couldn’t find the Berthe Morisot paintings she went to see at the Musée Marmottan-Monet a few months ago when she was in Paris. And because when she returned to San Francisco, she discovered that those paintings were in San Francisco at the Legion of Honor for an exhibition comparing the work of Morisot and Edouard Manet. For which the curators found paintings that seemed to establish Morisot as the ‘better’ artist.’ And because I received this note from a reader named Kevin, “I have just finished Sebastian Smee’s book Paris in Ruins which covers the Franco Prussian war of 1870, the Commune and the lives of Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot. A very interesting book and your article is very interesting as a follow up! T!” I’m offering for your perusal and pleasure, the post to which Kevin refers. I wrote it in conjunction with an exhibition at the Marmottan-Monet, ostensibly about Julie Manet, Berthe Morisot’s and Eugène Manet’s daughter, but actually about the careers and legacies of Berthe Morisot and her brother-in-law, Edouard Manet.

Mission Accomplished - Julie Manet as Champion & Collector.

I wrote a bit more about Julie Manet’s life after her mother’s death in conjunction with an exhibition at The Franciscaine in Deauville, here’s the link to that one, my discussion about Julie Manet and her two cousins, begins at Figure 23: A weekend in Normandie. You might also want to further your reading as Kevin did, and find Sebastian Smee’s book, Paris in Ruins. Happy reading and Gros bisous, Dr. B.