Mr. and Mrs. Auguste Manet
Artwork by Edouard Manet • 1860
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About this artwork - painting analysis
Executed in 1860, M. and Mme Auguste Manet reveals the intimate and filial dimension of Édouard Manet, who portrays his own parents here in a sober and touching composition. The painter captures his father, Auguste Manet – a Parisian magistrate – seated in a hieratic posture, while his wife Eugénie-Désirée stands slightly back, delicately holding a basket filled with fruits and vegetables. This physical and emotional proximity between the two figures testifies to a discreet conjugal affection, characteristic of French bourgeoisie during the Second Empire. The chromatic palette favours deep blacks that dominate the clothing and background, illuminated by a few strategic touches of white – Madame Manet's bonnet and collar, Auguste's beard – and by the coloured notes of the basket of provisions that brings welcome vibrancy to the whole.
The pictorial technique deployed by Manet already combines that frank and direct brushwork which will characterize his later work, while still respecting certain academic conventions. The faces are modelled with precision, revealing particular attention to expressions – the penetrating gaze of the patriarch, the thoughtful air of his wife. The brushwork remains relatively smooth, yet one already perceives that economy of means and simplification of volumes which will herald the painter's future boldness. This work belongs to a pivotal period when Manet, still imbued with the lessons of Spanish and Dutch masters, has not yet provoked the scandal of the Luncheon on the Grass.
Housed in the Musée d'Orsay, this family double portrait takes on a poignant dimension: Auguste Manet would die two years after this sitting, struck down by illness. The work thus constitutes precious testimony to the painter's filial affection and documents the stylistic evolution of an artist in the making, whose vision would soon revolutionize modern French painting.
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Image license: faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional public domain work of art.
