Emily A. Beeny - Böcker

An intimate exploration of an artistic friendship at the heart of the Impressionist movement  Édouard Manet (1832–1883) was a pioneer of modern painting, and Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) was the sole female founding member of the Impressionist group. To each other, they were colleagues, friends, and—following Morisot’s marriage to Manet’s brother—family. Unfolding over a period of fifteen years, theirs was arguably the closest relationship between any two members of the Impressionist circle. Through collaboration, competition, and mutual collecting, each influenced the other’s work and, in the process, changed the course of modern art.  The story of this relationship has most often been told through Manet’s magnificent portraits of Morisot, but the two artists’ connection was more than one between painter and muse. Exploring pairs and groups of related works, Manet and Morisot reveals that, while Morisot looked to Manet for inspiration during her early career, as Morisot’s work became more daring and garnered widespread acclaim, Manet began to follow her example, emulating her choice of subjects, her high-keyed colors, even her rapid, fluttering brushstrokes. Illustrated essays and entries challenge gendered perspectives in the Manet literature, while correspondence and a technical study invite readers into the two artists’ shared social circle and contrasting studio practices.  Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco  Exhibition Schedule:  Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco(October 11, 2025–March 1, 2026)  Cleveland Museum of Art(March 29–July 5, 2026)

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston houses a world-famous collection of European painting and sculpture, including such masterpieces as Renoir’s Dance at Bougival, Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, Degas’s Little Dancer, Turner’s Slave Ship and the largest collection of paintings by Claude Monet outside of France. This overview features these well-known and much-loved works, divided into thematic chapters that represent major art movements, with an introduction that describes the phenomena that helped chart the course of art in the period. In all more than 100 highlights from this impressive collection are illustrated and discussed, each testifying to the richness and complexity of European art in the modern era. The MFA Highlights series presents the best of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s collections accessibly and affordably. Its aim is threefold: to make available the greatest masterworks in the MFA; to provide an informative, readable overview of various artistic genres, cultures, and periods, for use by students, visitors, and scholars; and, over time, to create a library that will act as a general tour of world art through the ages.

The name Manet often evokes the provocative, heroically scaled pictures he painted in the 1860s for the Salon, but in the late 1870s and early 1880s the artist produced quite a different body of work: stylish portraits of actresses and demimondaines, luscious still lifes, delicate pastels, intimate watercolours and impressionistic scenes of suburban gardens and Parisian cafe s. Often dismissed as too pretty and superficial by critics, these later works reflect Manet's elegant social world, propose a radical new alignment of modern art with fashionable femininity, and record the artist's unapologetic embrace of beauty and visual pleasure in the face of death.Featuring nearly three hundred illustrations and nine fascinating essays by established and emerging Manet specialists, a technical analysis of the late Salon painting Jeanne (Spring), a selection of the artist's correspondence, a chronology, and more, 'Manet and Modern Beauty' brings a diverse range of approaches to bear on a little-studied area of this major artist's oeuvre.

The painting La Surprise by Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) belongs to a new genre of painting invented by the artist himself-the fete galante. These works, which show graceful open-air gatherings filled with scenes of courtship, music and dance, strolling lovers, and actors, do not so much tell a story as set a mood: one of playful, wistful, nostalgic reverie. Esteemed by collectors in Watteau's day as a work that showed the artist at the height of his skill and success, La Surprise vanished from public view in 1848, not to reemerge for more than a century and a half. Acquired by the Getty Museum in 2017, it has never before been the subject of a dedicated publication. Marking the three hundredth anniversary of Watteau's death, this book considers La Surprise within the context of the artist's oeuvre, and discusses the surprising history of collecting Watteau in Los Angeles.