Exhibition in Paris about Édouard Manet’s niece Julie – Culture

She was the muse and favorite model of portrait painters, later a connoisseur, patron, patroness and something like an impresaria of the Impressionist legacy. Julie Manet: a figure of that era, often mentioned, little known. The daughter of the painter Berthe Morisot and niece of Édouard Manet and sister-in-law of the poet Paul Valéry, born in 1878, was in the glory of the events between Belle Époque and Fin de Siècle during her first twenty years. The following six decades until her death in 1966, however, took place in the family circle and in the background of the discreet influence on the French art scene. In the existence of this woman, Impressionism is reflected as a family story in the narrow space between chic western Parisian quarters, some banks of the Seine downstream, Claude Monet’s water lily paradise in Giverny and one or the other castle in the surrounding area.

The Paris Musée Marmottan, in which she herself once frequented, owes its work to Julie Manet. his new exhibition dedicated. In addition to Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, the following appear in the leading roles: Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Maurice Denis, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. It is more of a contemporary documentary than an art historical event. Instead of revealing hidden masterpieces or showing new perspectives on familiar pictures, she primarily wants to tell picture stories, describe the fate of collections, and illustrate changes in view of individual works. There is anecdotal next to the surprising and often informative. The focus is on the bloom of the Impressionist years, viewed from the perspective of a witness who was born into the milieu, who picked up and took notes. Because Julie Manet, who keeps a diary and paints, whose pictures are exhibited here for the first time in context, did not see herself as authentic artists like her mother and uncle. She painted from the opportunity and through the stimulation of her milieu. The show is interesting when it shows how close impressionist painting grew to the upper-class lifestyle between salon and staged nature in the park and art landscape.

Julie, the daughter of Eugène Manet, the brother of the painter Édouard Manet, with her soft, dreamy look was already a popular subject when she was three, not only for her mother Berthe Morisot. Renoir also painted her as a little girl with a cat in her arms and later repeatedly as a young woman. What is revealing, however, is how Berthe Morisot, in contrast to the other portraitists, seldom names her daughter in the pictures and instead prefers titles such as “Girl in the Garden” or “Girl in a Blue Dress”, as if her mother role should take a back seat to that of the painter the personal nature of the motif merge into the genre.

Initially, there were hardly any major worries in the Manet-Morisot household. The artist friends went in and out, and Eugène too gave himself up above all to his inclination to paint, without, however, harboring any particular artistic ambitions. Art was a shared enrichment in this group. You didn’t necessarily strive for public recognition and simply presented each other with pictures.

After her parents passed away, 16-year-old Julie inherited a fortune accumulated over several generations

After Eugène’s death in 1893 and that of Berthe Morisot two years later, however, sixteen-year-old Julie was suddenly an orphan and, as the last direct offspring of the Manet family, heir to a fortune accumulated over several generations. Since about the same time her two cousins ​​Paule and Jeannie Gobillard, the daughters of Berthe Morisot’s sister, lost their parents, they moved in with her and the three were known as “the flying squadron”, always on the move between artist studios, stays in the country and Travel to foreign cities. Paule painted, Jeannie played the piano and wrote a diary like Julie. All of this happened under the benevolent, watchful eyes of Edgar Degas, friend of the family, and Julie’s tutor, Stéphane Mallarmé. The painter and the poet also looked for suitable bridegrooms when the time seemed to come to them. Mallarmé brought the poet Paul Valéry into play for Jeannie, Degas suggested his only pupil Ernest Rouart for Julie. In May 1900 there was a double wedding. And for the young women a new life began in the family circle, soon with children.

That could have ended the story. Julie had long recognized that in her own portraits of children, garden scenes, landscapes and still lifes, although often painted with the same unfinished appearance as Berthe Morisot, her talent did not match that of her mother. And her husband Ernest Rouart, who turned to painting instead of taking over his father’s company, did not seek confirmation as an artist in galleries and museums. In these circles, people painted quite unintentionally how people related literarily with one another in the corresponding milieu of the Ancien Régime. In the case of Julie Manet, however, something new was added that filled the next sixty years of her life. It constitutes the second interesting aspect of the Paris exhibition.

Open detailed view

The walls on the fourth floor of the Rouart-Manet house in the Rue de Villejust in Paris were hung full of works, some of which were portrayed alive in the rooms. Julie tried to break through this bourgeois being among oneself in the name of artistic universality. She advocated donating her mother’s work to museums. Montpellier, Toulouse and the Petit Palais in Paris added works by the impressionist to their collections, and Lyon acquired a “Paysanne niçoise”. And when Henri Rouart, Julie’s father-in-law and owner of an important art collection from the 18th and 19th centuries, died in 1912, the pull between the private sphere and the public received additional vigor. Because of a family disagreement, the Henri Rouart collection was auctioned off and Julie and her husband Ernest tried to buy back as much of the paintings as possible. Around 40 works by Fragonard, Hubert Robert, Delacroix, Corot and Honoré Daumier found their way into their collection and from there, some of them, as donations, to the Louvre.

The role of the private collector as a partner to the slower grinding mills of the public museums acquired a new profile here. Symptomatic of this is the painting “La Dame aux éventails” by Édouard Manet from 1873. Berthe Morisot acquired it shortly after it was created with the intention of bequeathing it to the Louvre, because in her opinion it belonged there. In view of the scandal surrounding Manet’s “Olympia”, however, she for the time being renounced it and kept it to herself. It was not until half a century later that the time was ripe for the donation. In 1930, her daughter Julie gave Manet’s “Lady with the Fan” to the Louvre, from where the picture was again transferred to the collection of the Musée d’Orsay half a century later.

The Musée Marmottan, which became the property of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1934, also became the estate owner of Michel Monet’s father Claude Monet in 1966 and has since housed the world’s largest collection of this Impressionist. In 1996 the children of Julie Manet bequeathed him several dozen works by their grandmother Berthe Morisot. The museum is now also the home of this Impressionist artist. With its exhibition, it pays a graceful, affectionate way to a figure who served the legacy of Impressionism more than with a brush with her sensitivity and organizational talent.

Julie Manet. La mémoire impressionniste. Marmottan Monet Museum. Until March 20, 2022. Catalog 45 euros