PRESS RELEASE

Manet & Morisot

Legion of Honor Exhibition Manet & Morisot Reveals New Scholarship on the Artistic Exchange Between the Two Pioneering Painters

Legion of Honor museum

October 11, 2025 – March 1, 2026

The first major exhibition dedicated to the formative friendship between 19th-century French painters Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot

SAN FRANCISCO, May 12, 2025 - The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco announce Manet & Morisot, the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the artistic exchange between Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot: the great pioneer of modern painting, and the female founding member of the Impressionist group. Theirs was the closest relationship between any two artists in the Impressionist circle, and it played a key role in the course of modern art. Opening at the Legion of Honor on October 11, 2025, and featuring masterpieces lent from public and private collections on both sides of the Atlantic, Manet & Morisot will present new research casting this friendship—and, by extension, the story of Impressionism—in a fresh light.

Living and working in Paris in the late 1800s, Manet and Morisot were friends, colleagues, and, after her marriage to his brother in 1874, family. The story of their relationship unfolds over roughly fifteen years (1868–1883), but has most often been told through the portraits Manet painted of Morisot between 1868 and 1874, with Morisot cast as a muse and model, rather than as an esteemed peer. More recent scholarship confirms that, although Morisot looked to Manet for inspiration and approval during her early career, by the mid-1870s Manet began to follow Morisot’s example, emulating her choice of subjects, colors, and her fluttering brushstrokes. Through carefully selected pairs and groups of paintings by the two artists, the exhibition will trace the evolution of the two artists’ friendship and mutual influence.

The exhibition is organized by Emily A. Beeny, Chief Curator of the Legion of Honor and Barbara A. Wolfe Curator in Charge of European Paintings, an internationally recognized specialist on the art of Édouard Manet. It will start at the beginning of Manet and Morisot’s friendship, with paintings of Morisot by Manet, including the 1868-1869 masterpiece The Balcony. The relationship underwent a noticeable shift in the early 1870s, when Morisot’s skill as a plein-air painter won her a place at the heart of the Impressionist group, which mounted its first independent exhibition in 1874. The next section of the show will address this shift through a series of motifs and compositions that the two artists handed back and forth to each other over the course of the 1870s. 

The relationship was marked by another major shift in 1880, as Morisot debuted a bold, sketchy new style of paint application, and as Manet refashioned himself as a painter of elegant women—a subject already closely associated with his sister-in law. The section devoted to this time period will reunite for the first time a series of paintings in which Morisot and Manet depicted the four seasons of the year as fashionable women: Morisot’s Summer (1878) and Winter (1880) and the paintings by Manet that they inspired, Spring and Autumn (both 1881). The exhibition will conclude with a section that explores Morisot’s collection of her brother-in-law’s work and how living with his paintings allowed her to continue their artistic dialogue even after his death.

“The friendship between these two great artists—collaborative and competitive, playful and charged—really did have a determining effect on the course of art history,” said Emily A. Beeny. “Its story is written in their pictures. Considering them side by side, we watch it all unfold: their shared interests and struggles, their mutual influence and understanding.” 

About the Artists

Édouard Manet (1832–1883) was born to a Parisian upper-middle-class family and cultivated a reputation as a refined Parisian gentleman, despite often painting scandalous subject matters. He frequented fashionable cafés, where he befriended several future members of the Impressionist circle, who looked on him as a kind of prophet and standard-bearer for their new way of painting. As a genteel lady, Morisot was excluded from such spaces of public entertainment. Manet’s first encounter with her seems to have taken place at the Louvre, where, like Morisot, he was copying after the old masters.

Though he never showed his paintings at the Impressionist Salons, Manet was an active participant and frequent applicant to the more traditional Paris Salon at Beaux-Arts throughout his career. In 1861, he scored his first resounding success with The Spanish Singer, a work inspired by his artistic idols Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Goya, only to be rejected from the next Salon in 1863. One of his rejected paintings,  Luncheon on the Grass, depicting a nude female picnicker with two clothed men, caused a scandal and furor, both for its brisk, “unfinished” surface and for its shocking modern subject. That same year, the death of his disapproving father allowed Manet to marry his longtime model and former piano teacher, Suzanne Leenhoff. 

Manet would continue to submit his work to the jury for the rest of his life, showing pictures in an ever brighter palette, with an ever brushier, Morisotian manner. Long the black sheep of the Parisian art world, he received the official recognitions—a Salon medal, admission to the Légion d’honneur, the beginnings of a steady market for his work—in the final years of his life. Despite struggling with early success, Manet is now celebrated as the "father of modern art," with his revolutionary contributions shaping the trajectory of contemporary painting.

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) was among the leading figures in the Impressionist movement and its only female founding member. Born into an upper-middle-class Parisian family, she initially learned to draw as a genteel accomplishment but quickly showed enough promise to receive more specialized training. Early in her practice, she trained under Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, who encouraged her to paint outdoors, a key technique for her later work. 

From 1858, Morisot painted copies of masterworks at the Louvre, where a mutual friend introduced her to Manet. In the fall of that year, Morisot began posing for The Balcony. This painting was the first of at least ten Manet works for which she posed over the next five years, spending countless hours in his studio, observing his methods and exchanging ideas.

In January 1874, Morisot became engaged to one of Manet’s brothers, Eugène. That same year, against Manet’s advice, she agreed to renounce the Paris Salon and exhibit with the budding Impressionist group, showing her work in its first joint exhibition. She became one of the most faithful members of the group, exhibiting her work in all but one of its eight avant-garde exhibitions, and developing a signature style defined by a light, feathery touch and a luminous palette. In her later years, she focused on family and her work took a dreamier turn, edging toward Symbolism. After her death in 1895, Morisot’s reputation declined, but was revived in the 1980s by feminist art historians. 

Opening at the Legion of Honor on October 11, 2025 and running through March 1, 2026, Manet & Morisot is the first scholarly museum exhibition examining the mutual influence the two French painters had on each other. After its presentation at the Legion of Honor, the exhibition will travel to Cleveland and be on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art, March 29 through July 5, 2026.

Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by a major scholarly catalogue, copublished by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Yale University Press, with essays, correspondence, and a technical study by leading French and American scholars of both artists.

Exhibition Organization

Manet & Morisot is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Presenting Sponsor is Denise Littlefield Sobel. Major Support is provided by Elizabeth and Bruce Dunlevie, Robert G. and Sue Douthit O’Donnell and Yurie and Carl Pascarella. Significant Support is provided by Dagmar Dolby and Edina Jennison. Generous Support is provided by Sandra Bessières, Cathy and Howard Moreland, Kristina Van Prooyen, and Margaret Naraghi Quattrin and Vic Quattrin. Additional support is provided by Alexandria and Dwight Ashdown, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Robin Rosa Laub, Leesa Miao and Martin Romo, and Andrea Schultz.

About the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, comprising the de Young in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, are the largest public arts institutions in San Francisco.

The Legion of Honor was modeled after the neoclassical Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris. The museum, designed by George Applegarth, opened in 1924 on a bluff in Lincoln Park overlooking the Golden Gate. It offers unique insight into the art historical, political, and social movements of the previous 6,000 years of human history, with holdings including ancient art from the Mediterranean basin; European painting, sculpture, and decorative arts; and the largest collection of works on paper in the American West. 

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are located on land unceded by the Ramaytush Ohlone, who are the original inhabitants of what is now the San Francisco Peninsula. The greater Bay Area is also the ancestral territory of other Ohlone peoples, as well as the Miwok, Yokuts, and Patwin. We acknowledge, recognize, and honor the Indigenous ancestors, elders, and descendants whose nations and communities have lived in the Bay Area over many generations and continue to do so today. We respect the enduring relationships that exist between Indigenous peoples and their homelands. We are committed to partnering with Indigenous communities to raise awareness of their legacy and engage with the history of the region, the impacts of genocide, and the dynamics of settler colonialism that persist today.

Media contact: 

Greta Gordon, Communications Manager, ggordon@famsf.org