Manet/Degas

Organised by the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie, together with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where it will subsequently be presented, the Manet/Degas exhibition promises to take a fresh look at the close bond between Edouard Manet (1832-1883) and Edgar Degas (1834-1917), while highlighting their contrasts.

Closeness and rivalry

The exhibition explores what these two great artists of the 1860s to the 1880s had in common, from the subjects that inspired both of them to the places, circles of friends and family circles they had the opportunity to frequent.

The exhibition also shows the contrasts between them: their temperaments, their artistic tastes and their career choices. It was at the time of the emergence of the Impressionist movement, at which the exhibition takes a fresh look, that their differences came to a head and put a damper on the budding friendship between the two artists, a friendship that had been strengthened by their shared experience in 1870 of the Franco-Prussian War.
While Manet sought artistic recognition and preferred to operate within the official channels, Degas participated in Impressionist exhibitions, thus breaking with the conventions of the time, alongside Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir.

Masterpieces never before exhibited together

The fruit of an unprecedented partnership, the exhibition will be a unique opportunity to discover many masterpieces never before exhibited together. It devotes considerable space to the Degas collection in which, despite the rivalry between the two artists, Manet came to occupy a more significant place after his death.

A fascinating exhibition that explores the close friendship and the rivalry between two giants of painting.

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