The Balcony by Manet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: The Balcony

Artist: Edouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris)

Date: 1868–69

Geography: Country of Origin France

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 66 15/16 × 49 3/16 in. (170 × 125 cm)
Framed: 75 9/16 × 57 7/8 in., 136.7 lb. (192 × 147 cm, 62 kg)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Musée d'Orsay, Paris (RF 2772)

Manet had his friends model for this unconventional group portrait, which includes his first portrayal of the painter Berthe Morisot, shown seated, along with the landscape artist Antoine Guillemet and the violinist Fanny Claus. Manet’s godson, Léon Leenhoff, is barely visible in the shadowy background. The figures appear frozen and detached, trapped behind the balcony railing in the liminal space between the public street and the private interior of the dark room beyond. After seeing the painting at the 1869 Salon, Morisot wrote that it gave her “the impression of some wild fruit, a bit unripe even. . . . I look more strange than ugly.”

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/845069