A Model Family at the Gardner reveals a private drama

The show, which opened this month, is far from lewd, though it could easily be. After Manet died (of syphilis, like his father), family rifts erupted into disputes over the estate, and even involved fraud (we’ll get to that, I promise). Manet’s story may be a period film drama waiting to be made, but that’s not where Gardner curator Diana Seave Greenwald’s concerns lie. Instead, “A Model Family,” somber and intimate, explores the emotional underpinnings of an artist who changed the art world forever.

Manet’s challenge to tradition was not always as brazen as “Olympia”; for him, he was iconoclastic enough to simply paint the world around him, while the academy remained devoted to heroic scenes from history and myth. Manet’s examination of the modern world included his own family. They were their favorite role models, either as themselves or as stand-ins for all men (or women).

Inevitably, domestic turmoil sets in. Are we wrong to read some family tension into “La festa del croquet,” 1871, a mildly sumptuous Manet clan scene? on promenade across its lush lawns, with views beyond the windy sea? It’s hard to tell, but Léon, dead center of the frame with his face turned to the viewer, seems to suggest something about his place in the hierarchy. The painting is a pendant, at least in this show, of “The Fishing”, 1862-63, Manet’s sumptuous ode to the landscape of a Peter Paul Rubens, redone on the family estate. He and Suzanne walk arm in arm in the foreground, a tribute to their recent marriage; lion, then a boy, sits on the far bank of a stream, away from them.

“Monsieur and Madame Auguste Manet”, 1860, is one of my favorite Manet paintings (and it’s a thrill to see it here). An aging Augustus, close to death, clenches his fist between the luxurious dark folds of his court robe. As he sits down and dejected, Manet’s mother, Eugénie, shoots him a sharp look. Concern or exasperation? With Auguste lurking with syphilis and Léon nearby, you have to wonder.

Al Gardner, a painting he had long known and loved took on disturbing new tones amid the fullness of family drama. The recent “Manet/Degas” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York offered a deep and thorough drift of the friendship between two modern titans; his calling card was the first appearance of “Olympia” on this side of the Atlantic, and also featured “Monsieur and Madame Auguste Manet.” But at the Met, these intimate details were elided or subsumed in the erupting modern moment, embodied by two modern masters who crafted. an art of, and for, its time.

Intimate in its own way, “Manet/Degas” only hinted at the private lives of either man. Manet’s sister-in-law, Berthe Morisot, made an appearance; so did her brother, her husband, Eugène. Suzanne appeared, albeit barely, in Degas’ painting of Manet lounging on a divan while playing the piano; Manet, so disgusted with how he was depicted, tore up the canvas to exclude it.

In the context of “A Model Family”, what is an obvious gesture of protection, from husband to wife, feels more profound and urgent in the face of the complications of family dynamics. Eugénie, adjacent to royalty—her godparents were Swedish monarchs—lived in Parisian high society amid whispers of her husband’s inclinations. Léon, whom Édouard loved and cared for as any good father would, was openly illegitimate.

Berthe, the noble herself, befriended Suzanne, although Eugénie barely tolerated her; you can speculate on deeper reasons, but class schism is surely one. It’s a shame you might be tempted to see Madame Auguste Manet, 1866, the striking portrait of his mother, in permanent mourning after Auguste’s death; his inky depths frame his grimace, his mouth closed in a wrinkled face.

For Manet, however, Suzanne was beloved, and Léon, one of his own (as perhaps he had been). Léon appears here as a frequent model, as Manet explored and updated several old masters, rooted in the present. So does Suzanne, notably in “After the Bath,” 1861, modeled after a Rembrandt depiction of a biblical tale. It is a nude, one of his last of her; once they were married, he never represented her undress again

But her visions of Suzanne were exalted, defying the class divisions her mother felt so keenly. It is not surprising that he played it again on the piano after Dègas’ affront. In “Madame Manet at the Piano,” 1868, the gentle curve of her rosy cheek and forehead are seen in profile, glistening in the pale sunlight. But “Reading,” 1868-73, exudes adoration in every brushstroke. Suzanne is sitting in a silky white dress, an afternoon glow filtering through the pale curtains. His gaze, serene and contemplative, is how he saw her. Léon, as an adult, hovers in the shadows behind her; Manet added it years later, to complete the picture of the family he chose, and chose to love more.

Manet, however, would himself leave the frame with his premature death from syphilis in 1883, aged just 51. What happened next is the chilling dissolution of the domestic bliss he had worked to build. His mother, who was now in charge of the estate, made sure that Suzanne and Léon did not receive anything, against her son’s wishes; the wealth of the Manet family would pass to Julie Manet, 4 years old, daughter of Eugène and Morisot. Suzanne sold several of her paintings to survive, often using some of the proceeds to commission copies from fans so she could still live with her ghosts (one, a poor version of “Madame Manet at the Conservatory,” 1883-95, hangs here , an emblem of his pain).

Léon helped his mother sell unfinished paintings, sometimes having other artists make touch-ups in the hope that a finished work would sell for more; one of them, a portrait of Suzanne from the 1870s, hangs here as a sign of that despair. He also trafficked in forgeries, according to the Manet archive.

Julie would grow to become the guardian of Manet’s legacy, and Léon, despite his faults, became an important primary source in the effort. Suzanne, however, mostly struggled. Expelled by Eugénie, she was dependent on the financial support of Morisot and Jules Dejouy, Manet’s second-eldest cousin and a lawyer, who allowed Suzanne to live in a country house on the family land rent-free.

Dejouy de Manet’s 1879 portrait opens the door to this chapter of Suzanne’s story; a radiant face, fat and kind, heads a column of dark robes; prescient, perhaps, of the battle to come, Manet includes a folder of legal documents under his arm with his own signature clearly visible. Manet’s very modern family, perhaps he knew, required an equally modern defense which, in his absence, he would not receive.

MANET: A MODEL FAMILY

Until January 20. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way. 617-566-1401, www.isgm.org

Murray Whyte can be reached at [email protected]. follow him @TheMurrayWhyte.