Manet and Friends accompanies an exhibition of the same name organized by the Palmer Museum of Art in memory of the Manet scholar and Penn State distinguished professor of art history George Mauner, who passed away in 2004. The catalogue focuses on the printmaking milieu of Paris during the 1860s and early 1870s, when Édouard Manet produced the majority of his graphic works. Seventeen of Manet’s etchings and lithographs are discussed, as are an equal number of prints by several of his colleagues and associates, including Félix Bracquemond, Alphonse Legros, and Marcellin Desboutin.
Nancy Locke’s feature essay examines Manet’s prints in light of the French concept of les moeurs—customs, habits, or manners, but also ethics—about which mid-nineteenth-century writers and artists were deeply concerned. In discussing the confrontational manner in which Manet regularly posed his subjects, Locke speculates on how the viewer might have been expected to respond to such portrayals. The catalogue entries were written by Patrick McGrady.
