S8 Ep255: THE ARTISTIC AND ROMANTIC BOND BETWEEN BERTHE MORISOT AND ÉDOUARD MANET Colleague Sebastian Smee. Berthe Morisot and her sister Edma were talented painters from a haute bourgeois family who successfully exhibited at the Salon, though society expected them

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 28 December 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

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THE ARTISTIC AND ROMANTIC BOND BETWEEN BERTHE MORISOT AND ÉDOUARD MANETColleague Sebastian Smee. Berthe Morisot and her sister Edma were talented painters from a haute bourgeois family who successfully exhibited at the Salon, though society expected them to eventually prioritize marriage over art. In 1869, the unmarried Berthe met Édouard Manet at the Louvre, leading to a complex relationship that resembled a Jane Austen novel. Manet, struck by Berthe's dark, Spanish features, asked her to pose for his painting The Balcony. Although Manet was married to Suzanne—a Dutch pianist he had wed under complicated circumstances involving a hidden son—he and Berthe engaged in a mutual flirtation. Their families became close, attending weekly soirées together, but Manet's marriage remained an impediment to any romantic union with Berthe. Despite the social restrictions requiring chaperones, Manet's influence drove Berthe's artistic development, just as her presence influenced his work. NUMBER 2
1872

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0:32.9	This is CBSI on the world.
0:36.9	I'm John Batchewith. Sebastian Smee. His new book is Paris and Ruins.
0:40.9	This is parallel universes. There's the violence of the War of 187, the Franco-Prussian War,
0:47.5	Bismarck, von Malta, Napoleon III, famous geopolitical catastrophes of the 19th century.
0:56.2	And there are the impressionists who float above all of this now here in the 21st century,
1:01.8	but at the time we're alive to the depredations and the violence, and the war touched them all.
1:08.0	But before the war, there was the salon or the Louvre,
1:13.9	two places that men and women could meet without scandal, especially if they were hot cuisine,
1:21.4	hot bourgeois. They ate well, too, hot bourgeois. And the Moro family is the one we're now going to introduce
1:29.9	because Bert Moro becomes the prominent female impressionist
1:36.4	of all the 19th century.
1:38.5	Still, she lives on in her paintings.
1:41.8	However, she was in love with Edward Manet, and Edward Manet was in love with her.
	...

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