54 pages • 1 hour read
Sebastian SmeeParis in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Salon of 1869”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Balcony”
The chapter opens with a description of the painting The Balcony (1868-69) by Édouard Manet, which vividly depicts the painter Berthe Morisot on a balcony looking over the iron railing, similar to the one at the Morisot apartment at 16 rue Benjamin Franklin in Passy, a wealthy neighborhood in the 16th arrondissement (district) of Paris. The Morisots were a wealthy family that had weathered the turbulence of 19th-century France. Berthe lived there with her parents, Cornélie and Tiburce. Berthe and Édouard had met each other at the Louvre in 1868 after being introduced by a mutual friend, the painter Henri Fantin-Latour.
They had an instant connection and Édouard asked to paint Berthe in a painting modeled after Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s Majas on a Balcony. Édouard had had success in the annual Salon with previous Spanish-inspired paintings like The Spanish Singer. Berthe agreed, even though it was controversial for a wealthy woman to pose for a painting that was not a traditional portrait. Berthe was surprised to learn during the sittings that Édouard worked without any preparatory sketches. The painting was accepted to the Salon of 1869, the major annual official painting exhibition.
Although they were friendly, as a wealthy, single woman, Berthe was not able to socialize with Édouard and his circle in cafés like the Café Guerbois in Montmartre. Édouard also came from a bourgeois family and lived near the Gare Saint-Lazare with his wife, Suzanne, their son, Léon, and his mother, Eugénie-Désirée. He would often spend time with Edgar Degas, another painter from a wealthy family.
Paris had undergone a major transformation and modernization during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III (1852-1870) and his prefect of the Seine, Baron von Haussmann. Paris had gas streetlights, new parks, markets, sewer systems, and boulevards. However, despite the seeming modernization and stability, the city was “riven by class tensions” (15). The working poor had been displaced by the changes to the hilly outlying neighborhoods, like Montmartre and Belleville. Those who hated the emperor also hated the imperial aesthetic, such as that found at the Opéra Garnier and the Salon.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Salon of 1869”
The wealthy Morisot family often hosted salons featuring music, theater, and art. Berthe and her sister Edma were both accomplished artists, with their talents supported by their parents. However, in 1869, neither of them were showing paintings in the annual Salon.
Berthe attended to see Édouard’s The Balcony at the Salon on its opening day, May 2nd, 1869. There, she ran into other painters with whom she was acquainted. Despite overtures from painters like Carolus-Duran, Berthe was focused on Édouard. She saw him at the Salon in front of his painting. She described her likeness in it as “more strange than ugly” (39).
Smee then describes one of Berthe Morisot’s paintings depicting the artist with her sister, Edma, The Sisters. Berthe likely painted it after seeing View of the Village by Frédéric Bazille at the 1869 Salon. Edma and Berthe were two of the few female painters who regularly exhibited at the Salon. Berthe was friendly with another female artist, Marcello [Adèle d’Affry], whose boldness and independence as a single woman inspired Berthe. After Edma married in 1869, the sisters exchanged letters, in which Edma lamented no longer being able to paint because of her new family duties.
Over time, Édouard’s and Berthe’s relationship deepened despite Édouard being married.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Execution of Emperor Maximilian”
Édouard Manet was “a passionate republican” (54) who hated Emperor Napoleon III. He had been 16 during the 1848 revolution that overthrew King Louis-Phillipe. That revolution led to the highly unstable Second Republic and the election of Louis-Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew. That same year, Édouard went on a naval training mission to Rio de Janeiro. During the trip, he became a more ardent republican and established his love and talent for art.
In December 1851 as an art student, Édouard sketched the dead bodies of protestors who had been executed by Louis-Napoleon’s troops in the Montmartre cemetery. He had married his piano teacher, Suzanne, earlier that year after she became pregnant with their son, Léon. In December 1852, Louis-Napoleon crowned himself Emperor Napoleon III.
In 1867, Édouard began a painting of the Exposition Universelle [World’s Fair] from the Trocadéro. He had struggled to gain public attention since he had shown The Spanish Singer at the Salon in 1861. Édouard decided to host his own solo exhibition outside of the Salon, just as the republican painter Gustave Courbet had done in 1855 after two of Courbet’s paintings had been rejected from the Salon. The solo exhibition failed to make money, but created a model for artists to display their work outside of the Salon system.
In June 1867, Emperor Maximilian of Mexico was executed following the failure of France to establish a client state there and Napoleon III’s withdrawal of troops in February of that year. Édouard decided to abandon his painting of the imperialist Exposition Universelle to instead paint the execution as a critique of Napoleon III’s regime. It was modeled after Goya’s painting The Third of May 1808. The painting, The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, and its corresponding lithograph were censored by Napoleon III.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Studio in the Rue de la Condamine”
Toward the end of 1869, Berthe experienced a bout of depression and insecurity. She was in love with Édouard, but he did not feel the same way. Although he supported her painting, he also critiqued it. Meanwhile, Édouard was “mentoring” a young female painter, Eva Gonzalès, who appealed to his admiration for all things Spanish.
At the beginning of 1870, Édouard challenged writer Edmond Durany to a duel for writing an “unkind” review of his work in Paris-Journal. Smee argues that Édouard was inspired by a duel between Prince Pierre Bonaparte and two republican newspaper men a few weeks prior, that had resulted in the death of one of the republicans, Victor Noir. However, Édouard’s duel with Durany was more peaceably resolved.
Édouard’s star was on the rise. He became close with painter Frédéric Bazille who, like other young painters, admired Manet’s opposition to “the imperial regime’s dead hand on the arts” (81). Their rougher, less-finished works with bold paint strokes and informal compositions, like Monet’s Luncheon on the Grass, were distinct from the classical art favored by the regime. Monet and Renoir began experimenting with capturing the effects of light while painting outdoors. Bazille and Manet called for an overhaul of the top-down Salon system, where only academy members could vote on the art. Bazille painted Studio on the Rue de la Condamine depicting the members of the growing movement. Édouard cheekily painted Bazille into the scene.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “The Salon of 1870”
By 1870, Bazille had begun to plan a “breakaway exhibition” outside of the Salon. Meanwhile, Berthe continued to work on the paintings she planned to submit that year, one of which was a portrait of Edma and her mother Cornélie. She was feeling conflicted about the work because another painter, Puvis de Chavannes, had told her that her mother’s head “was all wrong” (88) in the painting. Shortly before the exhibition deadline, Berthe asked Édouard for help. He came over and made “corrections” to her painting. After he left, Berthe was distraught at this violation and considered pulling her work from the exhibition.
The 1870 Salon included Berthe’s paintings as well as works by Degas, Manet, Renoir, Bazille, and Sisley. The main prize was won that year by the neoclassical Last Day of Corinth by Tony Robert-Fleury. However, the most talked-about painting was Salomé by Henri Regnault, which used an astonishing yellow background and broke the fourth wall by acknowledging that it was a painting of a model in a studio instead of a straightforward Biblical representation.
That summer, Berthe painted The Pink Dress, which “constitutes a decisive tilt toward what would become known as Impressionism” (93) because of its use of light and tone. Édouard continued to spend time with Berthe. He painted a portrait of her called Repose. However, Berthe was anguished by Édouard’s growing relationship with the young and beautiful Valentine Carré, whom he likewise used as a model for one of his paintings.
Part 1 Analysis
Part 1: “The Salon of 1869,” is a social history of Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, and their circle. It describes Berthe’s and Édouard’s backgrounds as well as their work around 1869. Part 1 develops the theme of The Relationship Between Art and Politics by describing controversial artworks of the time and the left-wing elements of Manet’s circle.
Smee notes that Berthe Morisot and her family were part of the “grande bourgeoisie.” The grande bourgeousie is the upper-middle class. They are a professional class that own property and have a fairly substantial income, but they have not been wealthy for as long as the aristocracy, whose generational wealth often stretches back hundreds of years. Berthe Morisot’s mother had industrial wealth and her father was a longtime civil servant; the family owned several properties in the wealthy 16th arrondissement of Paris. As a member of the grande bourgeousie, Berthe was expected to marry into a good family and uphold the conventional, conservative mores of her class. Her desire to become a painter who lived on that income conflicted with those expectations. The Manet family was also part of the grande bourgeoisie. This similar class position between the two artists drew them even closer, as Smee describes.
Smee emphasizes the extent to which Manet was inspired by Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828). Goya was a Romantic painter known for his bold compositions, political subject matter, and use of earth tones. Goya’s work laid the foundations for the later work of the Impressionists. As Smee notes, “Goya had been dead for forty years, but he was all the rage in Paris in the late 1860s” (23). In particular, Smee describes the similarities between Édouard Manet’s painting of Berthe Morisot, The Balcony, and Goya’s Majas on a Balcony. As an art critic, Smee focuses on how these paintings’ compositions and subject matters are similar. He uses this history to explain why Manet’s painting was so controversial. Goya’s painting featured “courtesans,” or high-class sex workers, and reviewers insinuated that Berthe posing in a referential painting likewise implied a certain sexual wantonness.
In his exploration of Berthe’s and Édouard’s relationship and respective works, Smee highlights the gender dynamics at play. Although they shared patrician backgrounds and had similar approaches and skill at painting, Berthe was in a more precarious situation. Smee relies on a mixture of primary source documents, such as the Morisots’ letters and contemporary reviews, and informed speculation to draw this conclusion. As he notes, “the invitation [to pose for Manet’s The Balcony] likely presented her with a dilemma” (31). The use of “likely” in this quote highlights the extent to which “we don’t know” (31) about certain aspects of their relationship. He assesses this tension with reference to the gendered expectations of the Second Empire, wherein a woman’s reputation was “at stake” if she strayed from the norm. The gender politics at play in their work is just one example of the political influences on French art and its reception at the time.
Smee analyzes various artworks from the period, not just those of Manet and Berthe, with respect to their political elements to illustrate the wider cultural context. For instance, Smee describes the sculpture La Danse by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux for the Opéra Garnier. Superficially, the sculpture looks like a typical baroque design, in keeping with the other sculptures commissioned for the façade of the building. However, it was controversial, because the wild dance depicted was “associated not only with prostitution and ‘wanton women’ but with a still more threatening form of energy: the potential anarchy and violence of the working class” (32). Using these and similar examples, Smee highlights how art was the site of political and social conflict in France in the 1860s and 1870s.
