Édouard Manet
Sur la plage (1873) - Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Portrait of Suzanne Leenhoff and Eugène Manet
Suzanne Leenhoff joined the Manet household as a piano instructor to the painter’s brother, Eugène. Leenhoff was a Dutch-born piano teacher of Édouard’s age with whom he had been romantically involved for approximately ten years. She also may have been Manet’s father mistress. In 1852, Leenhoff gave birth, out of wedlock, to a son, Léon Koella Leenhoff, whose father may have been either of the Manets. After the death of his father in 1862, Édouard married Suzanne in 1863.