‘Manet Paints Monet’

by Colin B. Bailey

New York Review of Books
April 14, 2015

In the summer of 1874, Claude Monet was living in Argenteuil, a suburb on the Seine some seven miles north of Paris, and Édouard Manet was spending time at his family’s property in nearby Gennevilliers, just across the river. Two paintings made by Manet that summer are the subject of Willibald Sauerländer’s new book, Manet Paints Monet: A Summer in Argenteuil, which Colin B. Bailey reviews in The New York Review’s April 23 issue. Monet’s influence is crucial to what Sauerländer considers to be Manet’s “conversion” to Impressionism. Yet their acquaintance was not always amiable.

We present below a series of paintings by Manet, Monet, and Renoir, with commentary drawn from Bailey’s review.

The Editors

Édouard Manet: Olympia, 1863

Monet had first crossed Manet’s path at the Salon of 1865, where confusion resulted owing to the regulation of hanging works alphabetically by artists’ names. There Manet showed his highly controversial nude Olympia.

Claude Monet: A Seascape, Shipping by Moonlight, 1864

At the Salon, Monet’s two large seascapes had been placed near the older artist’s work, and the Monets were much admired. Infuriated at being congratulated for Monet’s seascapes, Manet apparently exclaimed, “Who is this rascal who pastiches my painting so basely?”

More