The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) has opened a free companion exhibition titled "France in the Time of Manet and Morisot," running through August 23 in the Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Galleries. The show features 50 photographs from the museum's holdings of mid-1800s France, including works by Charles Marville and Édouard Baldus, who were commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III and the Louvre to document historic monuments and new architectural projects. Curated by Barbara Tannenbaum, CMA chair of prints, drawings, and photographs, the exhibition complements the museum's ticketed show "Manet & Morisot," which explores the artistic exchange between Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot. Highlights include André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri's 1861 portrait "Monsieur Merlen," which is noted as an early precursor to the selfie, and a photograph of the Arc de Triomphe under construction.
This exhibition matters because it provides historical and cultural context for the Impressionist era, showcasing how early photography documented the rapidly changing French landscape and society that artists like Manet and Morisot inhabited. By pairing a ticketed Impressionist show with a free photography display, CMA offers a richer, more layered understanding of 19th-century France, while also highlighting its own deep photographic holdings. The inclusion of Disdéri's work, which made photography affordable and sparked celebrity portraiture, connects 19th-century visual culture to modern phenomena like the selfie and celebrity photography, making the historical material relevant to contemporary audiences.