• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

First Impressionists

Two exceptional new exhibitions—one on the relationship between Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet, the other on Georges Seurat’s connection to the sea—invite us to reconsider three French masters.

Cleveland Museum
Citing both Manet’s first biographers and recent feminist scholarship, Emily Beeny explained that “as Morisot’s work became more daring and garnered widespread acclaim, Manet began to follow her example, emulating her choice of subjects, her high-key colors, and, most especially, her rapid fluttering brushstrokes.” Photo: Courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art
Marion Maneker
March 31, 2026

Join Puck to listen to this article

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve noticed we’re beginning to get a number of important museum shows that are in dialogue, perhaps indirectly or even inadvertently, with previous blockbuster shows. And the conversation between them offers some indication of where the art market is going. Two new shows that caught my eye, both for their subject matter and for their arguments, are Manet and Morisot, which opened last weekend at the Cleveland Museum, and Seurat and the Sea, at London’s Courtauld Gallery. The latter is a study of the painter’s seascapes, which constitute the majority of his extant paintings after he died at the age of just 31.