Manet: A Model Family

A groundbreaking and richly illustrated account of the importance of Manet’s family to his art

All families are complicated, but the family of Édouard Manet (1832-1883) was more complicated than most. The artist married a piano teacher who worked for his wealthy parents. Her son, born out of wedlock, may have been Édouard’s, his father’s, or another man’s. For all its complexities, Manet’s family fueled his creativity. They were his most frequent models, and supported him emotionally and financially. Manet: A Model Family is an innovative new exploration of the largely neglected story of the importance of Manet’s family to his art.

Presenting new research on works in which Manet depicted family members, Manet: A Model Family shows how an understanding of the artist’s family sheds crucial light on his artistic career. Manet’s mother, wife, stepson, and other relatives--including his sister-in-law, the painter Berthe Morisot--are given long overdue recognition for their roles in Manet’s life and work. Leading scholars present technical and archival analysis, including redating Madame Auguste Manet, an important, newly conserved painting of Manet’s mother. In an essay inspired by that canvas, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Hilton Als reconsiders Manet’s formative relationship with his mother and his bourgeois Parisian roots.

With its original account of Manet’s domestic relationships and personal life, Manet: A Model Family humanizes the artist and his contributions to the birth of modernism.

Published in association with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Exhibition Schedule
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
October 10, 2024-January 20, 2025

Diana Seave Greenwald is the William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. She is the author of Painting by Numbers: Data-Driven Histories of Nineteenth-Century Art and, with Nathaniel Silver, Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life. She is also the editor of Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer and, with Casey Riley, Fellow Wanderer: Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Travel Albums (all Princeton).