One summer afternoon in 1874, three French artists staged a paint-off. Édouard Manet and Auguste Renoir, visiting Claude Monet’s garden in the Parisian suburb of Argenteuil, both painted Monet’s family lounging on the grass. In turn, Monet depicted Manet at his easel beneath the trees.
Monet’s picture has vanished, but Manet’s “The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil” provides a key piece of evidence in a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence,”...