The Balcony

Three elegant figures stand at a green iron balcony railing, staring out in different directions with a strange disconnection - the painter Berthe Morisot seated and dreaming, a woman drawing on a glove, a man behind. Manet drew the arrangement from Goya's Majas on a Balcony, also in this collection, but drained it of anecdote, leaving a cool, enigmatic modern mood. Now in the Musee d'Orsay, the Balcony unsettles with its psychological distance - figures placed together yet utterly separate, each locked in private reverie behind the bright green bars.