A (Re)touching Story

"The language of friendship is not words, but meanings."

Henry David Thoreau (author)

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Berthe Morisot, a French Impressionist painter, doesn’t know what to do. The official Salon, a highly prestigious exhibition, is coming up and she’s eager to show one of her paintings. But the work she has in mind, Reading, feels unfinished. Desperate, she asks her friend Édouard Manet, another painter, for help.

Little does she know she’ll soon regret her innocent request.

Berthe Morisot, "The Mother and the Sister of the Artist" also known as "Reading", 1869 - 1870, oil on canvas, 39.76 x 32.2 in., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
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Manet knows how important the Salon is for Morisot and other 19th-century painters. It’s one of the only opportunities they have to display (and hopefully sell) their work.

He agrees to review her canvas. But instead of giving Morisot his opinion in words, Manet picks up a paintbrush and shows her what he thinks. Morisot is horrified, yet she can’t intervene. Once he gets going, there’s apparently nothing she can do to stop him.

Highly unamused, Morisot goes so far as to suggest that she’d rather wind up at the bottom of the river than see her painting, Manet’s markings all over it, shown at the Salon.

Berthe Morisot, "The Cradle", 1872, oil on canvas, 22 x 18.1 in., oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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Despite Manet’s edits, the painting is still quintessentially Morisot. Unlike her male Impressionist colleagues who wander the streets and paint outdoors, Morisot can’t amble about alone. She often depicts scenes from her private life. As a bourgeois woman and mother, it’s the world she knows most intimately.

Detail of Berthe Morisot’s "The Mother and the Sister of the Artist" also known as "Reading", 1869 - 1870, oil on canvas, 39.76 x 32.2 in., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

In the end, Reading is accepted by the Salon and Morisot decides not to lie down at the bottom of the river.

Though her friendship with Manet is icy for a while, things eventually smooth over. In fact, a few months later, Morisot helps Manet by agreeing to pose for (and not paint!) one of his pieces.