‘Manetsplaining’: author describes impressionist’s ‘agonising’ act of condescension

Washington Post art critic says Édouard Manet launched into ‘painful’ incident with fellow painter Berthe Morisot

Almost 140 years before a term was belatedly coined for the practice of men patronisingly setting women right on how certain things ought to be seen or done, it seems that a certain French painter had already become adept at the art of what must inevitably be called Manetsplaining.

Details of this late 19th-century case of mansplaining are laid out in a new book by the Pulitzer prize-winning Washington Post art critic Sebastian Smee, which explores how impressionism emerged as a response to the siege of Paris and the attendant civil and political tumult of the time.