In addition to being contemporaries who each produced storied masterpieces that were instrumental in the development of impressionism, the French painters Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas also shared complicated personal and professional relationships that were of great importance in their social lives and artistic careers. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition, Manet/Degas combines a treasure trove of loans from the Musée D’Orsay and elsewhere with its own rich holdings to explore this relationship, offering audiences rare opportunities to see world-famous paintings on this side of the Atlantic.
Headlining Manet/Degas is Manet’s groundbreaking work Olympia, which makes its first-ever trip to America, 158 years after it was first exhibited at the 1865 Paris Salon. Shocking in its day for centering a sex worker who stared boldly out from the canvas toward the viewer’s eyes, the painting caused a succès de scandale, bringing Manet instant acclaim and helping the budding impressionism movement break from artistic convention.
