Portrait of Berthe Morisot by Manet

Mondays with Edouard Manet!

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille, 1874

Self-portrait by Degas

Wednesdays with Edgar Degas!

Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France, 1855

Eugene Manet with his daughter Julie at Bougival by Morisot

Tuesdays with Berthe Morisot!

Throughout successful career Berthe focused on domestic scenes, families at rest, enjoying the peace and quiet of life's everyday pleasures. Nowhere is this more evident than in the paintings she did of her daughter Julie, shown here with her father, Eugene Manet, Edouard's younger brother.

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, France, c. 1881

Berthe Morisot with a Bunch of Violets by Manet

Mondays with Edouard Manet!

Quite possibly one of Manet's most well-known portraits of his fellow impressionist painter and sister-in-law, Berthe Morisot.

Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France, 1872

Happy 97th birthday Tune!

Tunis VandenBerg, 1921-1999: Husband, father, grandfather, brother, son, uncle, a small town physician who was part of the Greatest Generation. . . Steak on the grill with mashed potatoes tonight for birthday supper!

Navigator, B-24, U.S. Army Air Corps, World War Two

1991, Grandville, Michigan with granddaughter Melissa

Edgar Degas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wednesdays with Edgar Degas!

Mademoiselle Dihau, 1867

The Dancing Class, 1870

The Dance Class, 1874

The Rehearsal, 1874

Dancers practicing at the barre, 1877

Dancer onstage, 1877

The dance lesson, 1879

Sulking, c. 1870

At the ball by Morisot

Tuesdays with Berthe Morisot!

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, France, 1875

Berthe Morisot at Rest by Manet

Mondays with Edouard Manet!

I was slightly perplexed as to which day this should be published: Manet Monday or Morisot Tuesday, eventually opting for the former since it is, after all, a painting by Manet.

This is one of my favorite pieces by Manet. When we lived in Providence I would walk to the museum on my lunch hour to see this painting almost every day. Until it went on tour so you could see it.

Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, USA, 1870

Seated dancer by Degas

Wednesdays with Edgar Degas!

Two versions of "Seated dancer" by Edgar Degas:

Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 1881-83

Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia, c. 1879-80

Young girl in a ball gown by Morisot

Tuesdays with Berthe Morisot!

What has always fascinated me about this image is how timeless she looks -- or perhaps ageless? The title describes her as a young "girl" abut couldn't she also be described as a young "woman"?

Anyway, I can't get it out of my head that I've seen her somewhere before. . .

Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France, 1872

Young woman reclining in a Spanish costume by Manet

Mondays with Edouard Manet!

This is may or may not be Victorine Meurent -- but the cat played a similar role and place in "Olympia".

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, USA, 1863

Dancers practicing at the bar by Degas

Wednesdays with Edgar Degas!

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY, USA, 1877

In the Bois de Boulogne by Morisot

Tuesdays with Berthe Morisot!

Located not far from her family home Berthe would have spent many an hour walking in the Bois de Boulogne.

National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, 1879

Manet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mondays with Edouard Manet!

These few images don't represent all the Manet holdings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, of course, but they happen to be my personal favorites from the museum's new digital online collection.

All the narrative text is from the Met descriptions online.

Mademoiselle Victorine Meurent in Espada costume
(1862)

"Manet depicted model Victorine Meurent (1844–1928) in the guise of a male espada, or matador, borrowing her pose from a Renaissance print. Victorine’s shoes are unsuitable for bullfighting, and the pink cape that she flourishes is the wrong hue, but she carries off her role with panache. The backdrop reproduces a scene from Goya’s Tauromaquia series, celebrating the feats of bullfighters. When this painting was exhibited at the infamous Salon des Refusés of 1863, a commentator noted, 'Manet loves Spain, and his favorite master seems to be Goya, whose vivid and contrasting hues, whose free and fiery touch he imitates.'"

Young woman with a a parrot, or young woman in a pink peignoir
(1866, Victorine Meurent)

"Manet’s model, Victorine Meurent, had recently posed as the brazen nudes in Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass (both Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Here, appearing relatively demure, she flaunts an intimate silk dressing gown. Critics eyed the painting as a rejoinder to Courbet’s Woman with a Parrot (29.100.57) and as indicative of Manet’s "current vice" of failing to "value a head more than a slipper." Recent scholars have interpreted it as an allegory of the five senses: the nosegay (smell), the orange (taste), the parrot-confidant (hearing), and the man’s monocle she fingers (sight and touch)."

Madame Edouard Manet - Suzanne Leenhoff, 1830-1906
(1866)

"Manet undertook only six portraits of his wife, the Dutch pianist Suzanne Leenhoff, in the years after their marriage in 1863. Half were left unfinished, including the present work, providing rare insight into the artist’s technique. He sketched the figure and background with broad strokes, then turned to the facial features, scraping off the face at least twice, before eventually abandoning the picture."

Mademoiselle Isabelle-Lemonnier, 1857-1926

"Isabelle Lemonnier was the daughter of a successful Parisian jeweler and the younger sister of Marguerite Charpentier, whose grand portrait by Renoir is also in the Metropolitan’s collection (07.122). Between 1879 and 1882 Manet made several portraits of Isabelle, of whom he seems to have been fond; in the summer of 1880 he sent her a series of letters decorated with charming watercolor sketches." (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Mademoiselle Lucie Delabigne, 1859-1910

"This pastel depicts Lucie Delabigne, a fashionable Parisian courtesan who was also the subject of portraits by Jean-Louis Forain, Édouard Detaille, and other artists. Manet may have met her through the writer Émile Zola, who based many passages in his book Nana on observations made at Lucie’s home. The novel was published in 1880, just a year after this work was made." (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Monet family in garden at Argenteuil
(1874)

"In July and August 1874 Manet vacationed at his family’s house in Gennevilliers, just across the Seine from Monet at Argenteuil. The two painters saw each other often that summer, and on a number of occasions they were joined by Renoir. While Manet was painting this picture of Monet with his wife Camille and their son Jean, Monet painted Manet at his easel (location unknown). Renoir, who arrived just as Manet was beginning to work, borrowed paint, brushes, and canvas, positioned himself next to Manet, and painted Madame Monet and Her Son (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)."

The funeral
(1867)

"Manet’s unfinished painting is thought to depict the funeral of the writer Charles Baudelaire, which took place on September 2, 1867. The artist, unlike other friends who had yet to return from vacation or stayed away owing to the threatening summer storm, was among the few mourners present. This view of the meager funeral cortège at the foot of the Butte Mouffetard, a hill in southwest Paris, is framed by the silhouettes of the towers and cupolas of the Val de Grâce, the Panthéon, Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, and the Tour de Clovis in the background.

"Manet kept the picture until his death. In 1894 Pissarro acquired it in exchange for one of his own landscapes." (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Dancers on the set by Degas

Wednesdays with Edgar Degas!

private collection, 1878-1880

View of Paris from the Trocadero by Morisot

Tuesdays with Berthe Morisot!

Berthe Morisot lived near the Trocadero in the upscale community of Passy, in what is now the 16th arrondissement. This would be a view she would have seen many times and she undoubtedly spent much time strolling among the green of what is now mostly concrete, glass and water.

Notice the angle of this view -- this location today would put you roughly at the far right end of the top level of the Trocadero as you're facing the Eiffel Tower. The tower itself would be across the bridge and just out of view to the right. Les Invalides in the building with the gold dome in the distance slightly right of center.

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 187

Four views of the modern woman by Manet

Mondays with Edouard Manet!

Woman reading
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA, circa 1879

Woman with a gold pin, circa 1879

Young woman in a round hat, private collection, New York, 1877

Young woman taking a walk holding an open umbrella, 1880

The Star, or the Dancer by Degas

Wednesdays with Edgar Degas!

The Star, 1876, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Berthe Morisot at the Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris

Tuesdays with Berthe Morisot! 

I've always believed that meaningful art should speak for itself. Just as importantly, it should speak to YOU.

Enjoy Berthe and the next time you're in Paris stop by Passy cemetery, and pay your respects to her and her brother-in-law Edouard Manet.

Fillette portant un panier 1891

Le Cerisier 1891

Dans le pommier 1890

Fillette au jersey bleu 1890

Enfants a la vasque 1886

Cygnes 1885

Le jardin a Bougival 1884

Au bord du lac 1883

Roses tremieres 1884

Le port de Nice 1882

Eugene Manet et sa fille [Julie] dans le jardin de Bougival 1881

Au bal 1875

Bergere couchee 1891

Eugene Manet a l'ile de Wight 1875

Les foins a Bougival 1883

Branches d'oranger 1889