Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets (French: Berthe Morisot au bouquet de violettes) is an 1872 oil painting by Édouard Manet. It depicts fellow painter Berthe Morisot dressed in black mourning dress, with a barely visible bouquet of violets. The painting, sometimes known as Portrait of Berthe Morisot, Berthe Morisot in a black hat or Young woman in a black hat, is in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Manet also created an etching and two lithographs of the same composition. 

Manet became acquainted with Berthe Morisot in 1868. She was the grand-niece of Fragonard, and also a painter; Morisot and Manet influenced each other's work. He painted her portrait many times, including his earlier work The Balcony. She married Manet's brother Eugène in 1874. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berthe_Morisot_with_a_Bouquet_of_Violets

Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets
1872
Oil on canvas
55.5 x 40.5 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/berthe-morisot-au-bouquet-de-violettes-100102

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

Monet and Camille were often in financial straits during this period (1870-1880)—they were unable to pay their hotel bill during the summer of 1870 and likely lived on the outskirts of London as a result of insufficient funds. An inheritance from his father, together with sales of his paintings, did, however, enable them to hire two servants and a gardener by 1872. Following the successful exhibition of some maritime paintings and the winning of a silver medal at Le Havre, Monet's paintings were seized by creditors, from whom they were bought back by a shipping merchant, Gaudibert, who was also a patron of Boudin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet

Ships Riding on the Seine at Rouen
1872
Lithograph
37.7 x 46 cm 
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
https://www.nga.gov/artworks/52187-ships-riding-seine-rouen

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

The next painting is a portrait of the artist Berthe Morisot, a regular model, who was married to Manet's brother, Eugène. She is wearing a white dress as she sits with a fan in her right hand on a red sofa, beneath a then-fashionable Japanese print (in this case The Dragon King Pursuing the Ama with the Sacred Jewel by Utagawa Kuniyoshi). Her gaze seems meditative and absent. There is a striking contrast between the light tone of her dress and the dark tones of the furniture and the serenity of the subject with the violent activity on the print that is exhibited above her head.

Manet himself described the work as a study in physical and psychological repose — “not at all in the character of a portrait.” 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repose_(painting)

 

Le repos (Repose  - Portrait of Berthe Morisot)
1871
Oil on canvas
150 x 114 cm
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, US
https://risdmuseum.org/art-design/collection/repose-le-repos-59027?return=%2Fart-design%2Fcollection%3Fsearch_api_fulltext%3Dmanet%26op%3D%26page%3D1

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

Monet moved to Argenteuil, a suburban town on the right bank of the Seine River northwest of Paris, in late December 1871. Many of the types of scenes that he and the other Impressionists favored could be found in this small town, conveniently connected by rail to nearby Paris. In this painting, Monet was less interested in capturing a likeness than in studying how unblended dabs of color could suggest the effect of brilliant sunlight filtered through leaves. 
During the early 1870s, Monet frequently depicted views of his backyard garden that included his wife, Camille, and their son, Jean. However, when exhibited at the Second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876, this painting was titled more generically, "Woman Reading."

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/springtime/pAEsabNHoa1naA

Springtime
1872
oil on canvas
52 x 65 cm. 
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, US
https://art.thewalters.org/object/37.11/

 Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

Luncheon in the Studio (or The Luncheon) is an 1868 oil painting by Édouard Manet. Partially a portrait of 16-year-old Léon Leenhoff — the son of Suzanne Leenhoff before her 1863 marriage to Manet, and possibly the son of Manet or Manet's father Auguste — it is also an enigmatic work that has received limited attention within Manet's oeuvre. Critic Nan Stalnaker notes that "despite continued questions about its meaning, the work is acknowledged to be brilliantly painted and a major Manet work". 

The painting was exhibited in the 1869 Paris Salon along with Manet's The Balcony, another work that lacked a simple genre affiliation, and in which at least one of the figures seems to confront the viewer as if challenging the "fourth wall". Both pieces were found wanting by art critics of the day; by this time a common criticism of Manet was that his goal was to "attract attention at any price".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luncheon_in_the_Studio

Luncheon in the Studio
1868
Oil on canvas 
118.3 x 154 cm
Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/de/artwork/y7GEQB0GPV/edouard-manet/le-dejeuner
https://www.pinakothek.de/en/exhibition/from-goya-to-manet

Claude Monet
(1840 - 1926)
 

Le Pont de bois was painted in 1872, the year that Monet created his famous L’Impression, soleil levant, now in the Musée Marmottan, Paris.

The carefully nuanced pinks, yellows, greys and blues in the water and the sky mark very short-lived, fleeting moments of an evening. They come and go in a matter of minutes. Yet they are recorded with a deftness, rapidity, and sense of authority that is unmistakably the hand of Monet. As a compositional foil, he used the beams and scaffolding surrounding the bridge that was under reconstruction in the months following the Franco-Prussian War. The bridge itself had been destroyed by the French Army as it retreated from the advancing Prussian soldiers who occupied the town of Argenteuil. The scaffolding, bridge and reflections of the architecture in the water anticipate forms and shapes that would later reappear in the art of the twentieth century. One is reminded of Pierre Soulages, Franz Kline, and George Bellows. There are also echoes of bridges depicted in Japanese prints (fig. 2) that we know Monet admired. 

Charles S. Moffett
Vice Chairman, Impressionst, Modern and Contemporary Art, Sotheby's 

LE PONT DE BOIS (The Highway Bridge under repair)
1872
54 x 73 cm
Oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada
https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/in-the-spotlight/a-new-monet-at-the-national-gallery-of-canada

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

The Balcony (French: Le balcon) is an 1868–69 oil painting by the French painter Édouard Manet. It depicts four figures on a balcony, one of whom is sitting: the painter Berthe Morisot, who married Manet's brother Eugène in 1874. In the centre is the painter Jean Baptiste Antoine Guillemet. On the right is Fanny Claus, a violinist. The fourth figure, partially obscured in the interior's background, is possibly Léon Leenhoff, Manet's son.

It was exhibited at the 1869 Paris Salon, and then kept by Manet until his death in 1883. It was sold to the painter Gustave Caillebotte in 1884, who left it to the French state in 1894. It is currently held at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. 

In 1950, René Magritte made a wry diversion of it in which coffins replace the characters: Perspective II, Manet's Balcony.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Balcony_(Manet)

The Balcony
1868-69
Oil on canvas
170 x 124.5 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/le-balcon-707