Manet and Degas, from the Musée d’Orsay (and the Met) to the Bibliothèque nationale

First stage: Manet/Degas, or the blockbuster strongly recommended to art lovers

With its hand on its heart and its mind preoccupied with soaring insurance and transport costs, the Musée d’Orsay swears that we won’t be seeing such a collection again any time soon, brought in from all over the world at what we can only imagine is a disastrous carbon footprint. And yet, from the very first room, you’ll quickly get a taste for these prestigious exhibitions, lured by the remarkable loans whose relevant juxtaposition will seduce even the most jaded Parisian visitor. When all is said and done, what remains of a fine exhibition? Its catalogue, of course, will be the unanimous response of book lovers. Rigorously put together, with a wealth of good - but short - essays for want of notices, the book that accompanies the exhibition is a credit to the institution, which has undeniably succeeded in orchestrating a dizzying avalanche of masterpieces, thus enabling us to admire some of the finest Manet and Degas usually preserved on the other side of the Atlantic. The exhibition’s clever and sensitive layout alone justifies several visits to the exhibition devised by Laurence des Cars when she was head of the Musée d’Orsay. The confrontation suggested by the title is, of course, misplaced: the point here is not to choose who is the best, but to tell the story of fifteen years of artistic collaboration, using one of the two to get a better look at the other, despite a profound initial imbalance.

1. View of the portrait of Émile Zola by Édouard Manet and the portrait of James Tissot by Edgar Degas in the "Manet/Degas" exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay.
Photo: Sophie Crépy

See the image in its page

During the decisive decade of 1860, Manet was already causing a scandal, while Degas was still groping his way: they were not yet friends or rivals, but they came from the same Parisian bourgeois background, frequented the same places - from the Louvre Museum to the Morisot salon, not forgetting the brothel - and enjoyed cafés as much as horse races. Such commonplaces do not help to structure the subject matter of a major exhibition, but, if skilfully employed, they can nevertheless make up a meaningful and delightful itinerary in which it is instantly clear how much one owes to the other (ill. 1). From one painting to the next, the movement of poses, compositions and motifs revives an intense artistic dialogue that unfolds in every room thanks to the connections made by the two French curators of this exhibition, which is ultimately so American. "Tell Mr Degas that if he founds his museum, he should choose a Manet", wrote an expiring Berthe Morisot to her daughter Julie, while the latter, who outlived his elder brother by more than thirty years when he died of syphilis, was already living in his own Manet museum, as visitors gradually discover.

2. Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Monsieur and Madame Manet, c. 1868-1869
Oil on canvas - 65 x…