Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Berthe Morisot |
| Year | 1875 |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 38.1 cm × 46 cm (15.0 in × 18 in) |
| Location | musée Marmottan Monet, Paris |
Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Berthe Morisot. The painting depicts a man, Eugène Manet, relaxing at a hotel window, with vases visible on the parapet. Manet is looking out the window as two elegantly dressed women in white pass by. Several boats appear at the shoreline.[1][2]
The painting dates from the period just after Morisot married Eugène Manet, brother of the painter Édouard Manet, in December 1874. It was created during their honeymoon the following year, when they spent some time at Cowes, a town in the north of the Isle of Wight.
The 38 by 46 centimeter painting is in the collection of the Musée Marmottan Monet, in Paris.
Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight is an Impressionist depiction of everyday life on an English Island. We see a man looking at an ordinary scene of women walking and boats in a harbor. The loose brushstrokes and the realistic light are typical of Impressionism. Some scholars have interpreted Morisot's decision to paint from the privacy of the interior, hidden by a shear curtain, as a sign of the constraints imposed on women by the gender norms of the era.[3]
Relationship with the Manet brothers
'Morisot met other French Impressionist painter, Édouard Manet, in 1868 while she was a copyist in the Louvre.[4] They quickly became close friends and colleagues, inspiring each other's works. Édouard Manet introduced Morisot to his brother, Eugène Manet and they were married in 1874.[5] In 1875 the two traveled to the Isle of Wight for their honeymoon where Morisot painted this first painting of her husband.
Eugène Manet was her muse in two other paintings later in their marriage, Eugène Manet and His Daughter at Bougival, 1881 and Eugène Manet and His Daughter in the Garden, 1883. Manet was not only a model for Morisot and her husband but an intellectual companion as he was also passionate about art.
