At Place Clichy in Paris

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At Place Clichy in Paris,
Édouard Manet , around 1878
39.4 × 22.5 cm
oil on canvas,
private collection

At Place Clichy in Paris (French: Vue Prize de la Place Clichy ) is a painting by Édouard Manet . The 39.4 cm high and 22.5 cm wide picture shows a sketch of a Parisian street scene. It is painted in oil on canvas and was created in the 1870s in the vicinity of Manet's studio and apartment. The painting is in a private collection.

Image description

The portrait version shows a Paris cityscape. None of the city's distinctive buildings can be seen, but an everyday scene with a busy street in the foreground and the facades of various houses staggered behind it. The picture painted with loose brushstrokes shows only a few details clearly. The lively hustle and bustle of a street is shown in the lower area. On the left a man in blue work clothes and a gray hat is sweeping the street. There may be a trash cart to his left. Another vehicle, with significantly larger wheels, is on the right edge of the picture. In between is a person leaning forward in a white shirt and a light straw hat. As with the street sweeper, the face cannot be recognized. A group of other people stands in front of the shop window on the left edge of the picture. What kind of business this is about cannot be guessed by looking into the dark-looking shop, nor is there any visible advertising lettering that could provide information about this. The first floor of the house is more conspicuous than the ground floor with the shop window. Its small window front made of vertical and round panes of glass is made of a bright, light material. Next to this building is a tree in the center of the picture, which with its dense green foliage extends over the second floor of the house. To the right of the tree, people are sitting in a pub under a brown awning. Behind the shop on the street and the house with the shop window rise further buildings. On the left edge of the picture, behind the house with the shop window, a house with a gray facade and a gray-blue zinc roof is painted. A narrow metal chimney marks the corner of the house. While windows are indicated with pale paint on the facade facing the viewer, the firewall pointing to the right may show illegible advertising, which the painter indicated in strong blue dots. Behind the bar with its brown front and the flat blue-gray zinc roof is a house with a light facade. Windows and open shutters are painted on it. The roof with its brown tiles has a flat brick chimney on the right and a single skylight. In the upper third of the picture there are other house facades, which, like the sky, are shown in shades of gray. There are also two bright spots of color on the right edge of the picture, but their meaning remains unclear. The picture is neither signed nor dated.

Background to the creation of the picture

The picture is one of the few cityscapes in the artist's work. In addition to port views of Boulougne , Bordeaux and Calais , Manet painted various views of his native Paris. These include the painting The World Exhibition of 1867 , in which he showed a panorama of Paris for the first time, as well as the painting The Burial from around 1867 , in which the Paris silhouette serves as a background. Both works are event pictures with special meaning for Manet. For the world exhibition in 1867 he had his own pavilion built for his works on the edge of the exhibition grounds, and in the depiction of a funeral procession he probably made the burial of his friend Charles Baudelaire a subject . During the Franco-Prussian War from 1870 to 1871, the winter landscape Effet de neige à Petit-Montrouge was created as a deserted atmospheric image with a motif from the Paris outskirts. In two other pictures, Manet shows everyday life in the French capital. In Music in the Tuileries Garden from 1862, the trees in the park form the background for a group portrait of his friends on Sundays, and in The Railway from 1873 he depicts a woman with child in front of a railing through which the view of the railroad tracks of the Saint-Lazare station falls. In The Railway , Manet also painted the house in the upper left corner, Rue der St.-Pétersbourg No. 4, in which his studio was located. From the studio window of this house he painted a series of three views of Rue Mosnier (now Rue de Berne) in 1878, in which, as in the painting At Place Clichy in Paris , he looks down from an elevated position at what is happening on a Parisian street .

  • Édouard Manet:
    The World's Fair of 1867 , 1867

  • Édouard Manet:
    The funeral , around 1867

  • Édouard Manet:
    Effet de neige à Petit-Montrouge , around 1870

  • Édouard Manet:
    Rue Mosnier with flags , 1878

The similarities in the motif may have prompted Rouart / Wildenstein to date the picture At Place Clichy in Paris in their catalog raisonné as well as the views of Rue Mosnier to 1878. Manet's biographer Théodore Duret , a contemporary of the painter, had narrowed the painting's time to 1875–1877, and the museum director Françoise Cachin assumed that “1871?” Was a relatively early year. Although the Effet de neige à Petit-Montrouge, painted in 1870, already shows loose brushwork, the depiction of an everyday Parisian scene with the motif of the hustle and bustle in a street in Manet indicates a later year of creation. The author Maria Teresa Benedetti, who studied the painting in more detail on the occasion of the Manet exhibition in Rome from 2005 to 2006, and also connects it chronologically with the views of the Rue Mosnier, has also decided on the year 1878.

Utagawa Hiroshige:
Saruwaka-chō , 1856

After his death, Suzanne Manet made a handwritten note on the back of the painting that this was actually a work by the artist : “Garanti d'Edouard Manet, veuve Edouard Manet” (basically: guaranteed by Edouard Manet, widow Edouard Manet ). However, in addition to the time of creation, the exact location of the depicted subject is also uncertain. The picture title in use today goes back to Théodore Duret, who referred to the picture in 1902 as Vue Prize près de la Place Clichy . Duret did not provide a clue as to whether the picture actually shows the Place de Clichy or a street near the square. Since many of the buildings that stood on Place de Clichy and the surrounding area in Manet's time are no longer preserved, the location of the painter can no longer be determined. Various authors followed Duret in naming Place Clichy in the picture title, while other art historians such as Françoise Cachin simply titled the picture with Street . In the other street pictures from 1878, the views of the Rue Mosnier, Manet painted the view from the window of his studio. In the picture at Place Clichy in Paris , the location is unknown, but it is possible that Manet depicted the view from his apartment. Two apartments are suitable for this. From 1866 to 1878 Manet lived at 49 rue de St.-Pétersbourg, then moved into a new apartment at 39, rue de St.-Pétersbourg, where he lived until his death in 1883. Both apartments were not far from Place de Clichy and the painting could both be a farewell picture from the old apartment, as well as have captured the first spontaneous view from the new apartment.

The area around Place de Clichy was well known to Manet, as not only were his two apartments and his studio nearby, but many of his friends also lived in this district and went to the local cafes with him. The motif of the Place de Clichy has been depicted by numerous artists, including before Manet in 1874 by Giovanni Boldini and in 1875 by Norbert Goeneutte , and after Manet in 1880 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir . However, none of the pictures by his painter friends resembles Manet's painting and shows a similar perspective. Even if there is no direct model for Manet's motif, an inspiration from Japanese artists is clear. Maria Teresa Benedetti refers to ukiyo-e - woodcuts by various artists. The striking portrait format can be found, for example, in Utagawa Hiroshige's series 100 Famous Views of Edo . The sheet Saruwaka-chō belonging to this series shows a night view of a street in the theater district of Edo in a similar way to that chosen by Manet in the painting At Place Clichy in Paris . In both pictures there is a hustle and bustle on a street of a big city.

Provenance

When Manet died in 1883, the painting was in his estate. It then came into the possession of the journalist and art critic Gustave Geffroy . Subsequently, the picture belonged to the collection of the painter and sculptor Eugène Blot , who owned several impressionist works. He gave it away at Place Clichy in Paris in May 1900 to his friend, the art dealer Gaston Bernheim . In 1951, through the Adam Brothers art dealer in London , the painting came into the collection of Richard A. Peto, who lived in London and on the Isle of Wight . He loaned the painting to the French Paintings exhibition in 1951 under the title A Street . A Second Selection from Mr Peto's Collection for an exhibition of the Arts Council of Great Britain in London and in 1960 for the exhibition French Impressionists and English Paintings and Sculptures from the Peto Collection at the City Art Gallery in Plymouth . These exhibitions were the first two occasions on which a large audience could see the picture. After Richard A. Peto's death, his widow Rosemary Peto inherited the painting. The picture was later in a private collection in Paris whose name was unknown. In 1975, Alain de Leseleuc , who lived in Geneva and had previously directed the Théâtre de Paris , acquired the painting . His heirs sold the painting to the London art trading company Dickinson. He sold it to an unknown collector in 2007. On June 24, 2015, the picture was put up for auction in the London branch of the Sotheby’s auction house and changed hands for £ 1,685,000 . The new owner is again unknown.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ German title according to Sandra Orienti: Edouard Manet, works , S. 76th
  2. ↑ French title according to the catalog raisonné by Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet, Catalog raisonné , Vol. 1, p. 221 No. 273.
  3. ↑ Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet, Catalog raisonné , Vol. 1, p. 221 No. 273.
  4. ^ Théodore Duret: Histoire d'Édouard Manet et de son oeuvre , p. 251.
  5. ^ Françoise Cachin: Manet , p. 151.
  6. ^ Maria Teresa Benedetti: Manet , p. 302.
  7. ^ Théodore Duret: Histoire d'Édouard Manet et de son oeuvre , p. 251.
  8. ^ Françoise Cachin: Manet , p. 151.