Yes. Claude Monet and Édouard Manet knew each other well. They painted side by side in the summer of 1874, and Monet was one of the six men who carried Manet's coffin in May 1883.
Manet was the older man, famous in Paris since the scandal of Olympia at the Salon of 1865. Monet was the younger painter, still unknown, who worked outdoors along the Seine.
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The friendship did not begin as one. When they first crossed paths, Manet believed Monet was copying him, and he said so in terms no friend would forgive.
It was an uneven exchange of insults, verdicts and favors between two painters, and the record holds a surprise: the scene Monet described for decades, at Manet's deathbed, does not survive his own letter.
The tidy version, two great painters recognizing each other at once, is not what the record shows. I find the real one better: a friendship with insults in it, and a debt that Monet was still paying, in his own way, years after Manet was dead.
What You'll Discover
What Manet first called Monet.
Who Manet wanted to stop painting.
Where Monet really was when Manet died.
What Monet did after the funeral.