See How Manet and Morisot’s Creative Friendship Influenced Their Artistic Styles

The works of French artists Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot have been exhibited in museums around the world over the past century. But no major exhibition has explicitly explored the creative partnership that blossomed between the two artists.

That is, not until “Manet & Morisot,” which is on display at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor through March 1, 2026. Featuring 36 paintings and six drawings, the exhibition revolves around the friendship that developed between Manet, a leading figure in the transition from Realism to Modernism, and Morisot, one of the only female Impressionists to exhibit her work under her own name. Following its run at the Legion, “Manet & Morisot” will travel to the Cleveland Museum of Art.

In many accounts of the relationship between the two artists, Manet is painted as a mentor to Morisot, who was nearly a decade his junior. “Manet & Morisot” seeks to challenge that reading, which often overlooks Morisot’s own artistic innovations and influence on Manet’s art.

“It’s not a case of master and pupil,” Emily A. Beeny, chief curator of the Legion of Honor, who organized the show, tells Local News Matters’ Leslie Katz. “It’s an exploration of the exchanges between artists at the heart of the Impressionist movement.”

Manet and Morisot were introduced by the painter Henri Fantin-Latour, a mutual friend, at the Louvre in 1868, per Artnet’s Brian Boucher. Soon after, Morisot posed for Manet’s The Balcony, the first of many times she appeared in his work. Manet, who had already catapulted into art world fame with his painting Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass), praised and encouraged Morisot’s early work. The artists’ lives became further entwined when Morisot married Manet’s brother, Eugène.

As much as art was a point of bonding for the two artists, it was also a point of contention at times throughout their 15-year friendship. When advising Morisot on a portrait of her mother and sister that was to be exhibited at the Paris Salon, Manet took a brush and painted over large swaths of her work, per the New York Times’ Karen Rosenberg. Years later, Manet advised Morisot against renouncing the renowned Salon and exhibiting instead with the up-and-coming Impressionists. She went anyway, becoming one of the group’s foundational members.

Over the years, rumors have circulated about a romantic connection between the pair. The possibility is not a primary focus of “Manet & Morisot,” but it’s not entirely absent, either—especially in Manet’s portraits of Morisot. Of the 11 Manet made throughout the course of their friendship, five are in the Legion show. “These portraits amount, cumulatively, to one of the greatest records of intimacy in the history of art,” writes the Washington Post’s Sebastian Smee.

Morisot, for her part, hinted at the possibility in a letter to her sister. “Manet teases me incessantly, makes fun of my manners, and I end up finding that, if he were free, I’d be much likelier to fancy him than anyone else,” she wrote of her fellow painter, per the Times.

“Manet & Morisot” is more interested in the artistic sparks that flew between the two painters. It opens with Manet’s The Balcony, which features Morisot, and Morisot’s Young Woman at Her Window—two paintings from 1869 set near terraces. Manet’s painting positions the viewer on the outside of a house looking in. Morisot’s vantage point is more intimate—she takes the viewer inside a room, where a young woman sits near her open balcony. The pairing of these two paintings highlights a difference between their painters: While Manet’s subjects often confront the viewer with their gazes, Morisot’s women are often in the middle of a task, and seem completely unaware that they are the subject of a scene.

Manet seemed to be somewhat inspired by this approach when he painted The Railway, which features a young girl with her back to the viewer—a vantage point that had already appeared in Morisot’s work, writes Mission Local’s Julie Zigoris.

“Manet & Morisot” makes sure to underscore how influential Morisot’s work was to Manet, especially in his later years. Recent scholarship has shown that Manet increasingly took after Morisot, mimicking “her choice of subjects and colors, and even her rapid, fluttering brushstrokes,” according to the exhibition description.

Their creative exchange is on full display in four half-portraits (two by each artist) near the end of the exhibition, which show elegant women in different seasons. Morisot painted Summer and Winter in 1880, and Manet followed her lead with Spring in 1881 and finally Autumn, which was unfinished when he died in 1883.

“It’s really a thrill to see them on the same wall,” Beeny tells Local News Matters.

“Manet & Morisot” is on view at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco through March 1, 2026.