Manet & Morisot

By Apollo, 3 October 2025


In 1868 Henri Fantin-Latour took Édouard Manet to the Louvre to meet Berthe Morisot, who was sketching a nude by Rubens. Morisot was by now a regular at the Paris Salon, having first exhibited in 1864; Manet was already famous – or infamous – for Le déjeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia (both 1863). The two became firm friends and Morisot, who was nine years Manet’s junior, soon brought him into the circle of painters that would come to be known as the Impressionists. This exhibition at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco reframes the relationship between the two painters, positing that although Morisot looked up to Manet and collected his work, she influenced him in turn with her loose brushwork and paintings of society women (11 October–1 March 2026). It is fascinating to see, for example, how her personifications of seasons, Summer and Winter (1878 and 1880), inspired his Spring and Autumn (both 1881).

Find out more from the Legion of Honor’s website.
Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary

View of Paris from the Trocadero (1871–73), Berthe Morisot. Santa Barbara Museum of Art
The Harbor at Lorient (1869), Berthe Morisot. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Boating (1874/79), Édouard Manet. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York