The Balcony

Painted in 1868-1869 and now at the Musée d'Orsay, The Balcony was exhibited at the Salon of 1869 and depicted three figures — the painter Berthe Morisot, the violinist Fanny Claus, and the landscape painter Antoine Guillemet — on an iron-railed balcony. The painting deliberately invokes Goya's Majas on a Balcony while subverting the Spanish model's sense of erotic display: Manet's figures are absorbed in their own thoughts, disconnected from one another and from the viewer, each psychologically isolated despite their physical proximity. Berthe Morisot — in the foreground, her dark eyes direct and guarded — is the emotional centre of the canvas.

The bright green of the iron balcony railing is the painting's most unexpected chromatic element, its vivid zinc-green creating a tonal bridge between the white dresses of the women and the dark interior beyond. Morisot's face is built with cool, almost clinical directness. The three figures are painted individually rather than as a group, the compositional unity maintained by the shared architectural setting rather than psychological interaction.