Thistle (Manet)

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Distel
Édouard Manet , 1858–1860 or 1880
65 × 54 cm
oil on canvas
From the Heydt Museum , Wuppertal

Thistle or Die Distel (French: Chardons or Chardon ) is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet . The 65 × 54 cm picture, painted in oil on canvas, shows a roughly life-size thistle with surrounding grasses in close-up in front of an almost monochrome background. Art historians came to very different dates of the picture, which is sometimes assigned to the early work and sometimes to the painter's later work. The painting belongs to the collection of the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal.

Image description

In this picture Manet combines the genres of still life and landscape . In the center of the picture is a towering thistle that has grown out of the earth. Manet painted the wavy green leaves with their thorny tips protruding on all sides with great attention to detail. On the top of these leaves are lighter shades of green that indicate a source of light from above. On the upper shoots are the flower heads with individual small reddish leaves. Various grasses are painted on both sides of the plant up to the edge of the picture, their delicate shape counterbalancing the thistle dominating the picture. The foreground, painted in shades of green and brown, forms an indefinite area that could be grassy soil. The background is kept almost monochrome in a red-brown tone. The painting is neither signed nor dated.

With a height of 65 cm and a width of 54 cm, the canvas shows a thistle roughly life-size. Manet depicted the plant “in an almost photographic close-up” close to the ground, ”as the art historian Juliet Wilson-Bareau notes. She goes on to say that the thistle was probably painted from nature, and emphasizes the strong immediacy, "as if the plant were pushing out of the canvas into the viewer's room". The author Christiane Lange praises the “atmospheric liveliness” of the picture and sees a naturalism in it, which is achieved “through the play of light and shadow and the fine gradation of gray tones”.

Dating of the picture

When dating the picture, art historians came to very different assessments. The Von der Heydt Museum, which owns the painting, has in part given 1880 as the year of creation. The reason for this may be a lettering on the back of the picture by Suzanne Manet , the painter's wife. The inscription reads “Je certifie que ce tableau de chardons est de mon mari fait à Bellevue 1880 Mme Édouard Manet” (analogously I confirm that this picture of the thistles was painted by my husband in Bellevue in 1880, Madame Édouard Manet ). In fact, Manet stayed in Bellevue, a district of Meudon , for a cure in the summer of 1880 . There he painted, among other things, some garden views and still lifes of fruits. For Manet, who was already seriously ill at that time - he was plagued by symptoms of paralysis in his leg as a result of syphilis - the symbolism of pain associated with a thistle could have prompted him to choose a motif.

This contrasts with the painting's significantly earlier dates. Manet's biographer Adolphe Tabarant thought the statement on the back of the picture was wrong as early as 1931. He suspected that the painting Distel had already been created around 1866. Even earlier, to 1858–1860, Paul Jamot and Georges Wildenstein dated the picture in their 1932 Manet catalog raisonné. This was later joined by other authors such as Denis Rouart and Daniel Wildenstein , who decided on the year 1858. Juliet Wilson-Bareau provided a possible explanation for the discrepancy between the handwritten note of the wife and the possible earlier dating of the picture. She suspected that Suzanne Manet had not noted the text on the back until many years after Manet's death. Perhaps this was done at the request of Théodore Duret when he acquired the painting in 1899. Suzanne Manet's memories may have been inaccurate after so many years. There are several arguments in favor of dating to 1858–1860. The painting Thistle differs significantly from the other paintings painted in Bellevue in 1880 in terms of the style of painting and the choice of colors. The painting The Watering Can, made in the Bellevue garden in 1880, shows a much more spontaneous brushstroke and a more colorful palette. The painting Distel , on the other hand, shows parallels with other pictures from Manet's early work in a conventional way of painting and a reduced selection of colors. His pictures, created around 1860, were still clearly influenced by the traditional painting that he had learned in the studio of his teacher Thomas Couture . It was not until the beginning of the 1860s that he began to develop his own painting style with loose brushstrokes. In addition, Wilson-Bareau sees the thistle as a model that Manet took up again in later works and inserted it as a repoussoir motif. Thistles or similar plants appear as such an object in the foreground, for example in the paintings The Students of Salamanca from 1860, in Der Fischfang from 1861–1863 or in The Surprising Nymph from 1859–1861. In the Wuppertal Manet exhibition 2017-2018, the Von der Heydt Museum presented the painting with 1858 as the year of creation.

  • Édouard Manet:
    The watering can , 1880

  • Édouard Manet:
    The Students of Salamanca , 1860

  • Édouard Manet:
    Fishing , 1861–1863

Provenance

After Manet's death in 1883, his godchild Léon Leenhoff made a list of the pictures in the artist's studio. The painting Thistle was given inventory number 288. It was not one of the works that were auctioned off at the estate auction of Manet's works in the Hôtel Drouot in 1884 . It is unclear whether the painting remained in the artist's family afterwards or was given as a gift to a friend close to Manet. When the picture was auctioned at the Hôtel Drouot on May 18, 1899, the consignor remained anonymous. The buyer was Manet's biographer Théodore Duret. After his death, the painting reappeared on the art market on March 1, 1928 - again in the Hôtel Drouot - when Duret's estate was auctioned. On this occasion, the Parisian art dealer Gérard Frères acquired the painting. After that, Justin Thannhauser's Berlin art dealer kept the picture in its inventory. The next owner was the banker Eduard von der Heydt from Wuppertal , who donated the work to the Wuppertal Municipal Museum (today Von der Heydt Museum) in 1957.

literature

  • Brigitte Buberl (Ed.): Cézanne, Manet, Schuch; three ways to autonomous art . Exhibition catalog Museum for Art and Cultural History of the City of Dortmund, Hirmer, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7774-8640-X .
  • Sabine Fehlemann (Ed.): Von der Heydt Museum; the paintings of the 19th and 20th centuries . Wienand, Kölnl 2003, ISBN 3-87909-799-2 .
  • Gerhard Finckh (ed.): Edouard Manet . Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal 2017, ISBN 3-89202-098-1 .
  • Paul Jamot, Georges Wildenstein : Manet, l'oeuvre de l'artiste, catalog critique . Les Beaux-Arts, Paris 1932.
  • Sandra Orienti: Edouard Manet, catalog raisonné . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-548-36050-5 .
  • Ulrich Pohlmann (Ed.): A New Art? Another nature! - Photography and painting in the 19th century . Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-8296-0069-0 .
  • Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet, Catalog raisonné . Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris and Lausanne 1975.
  • Adolphe Tabarant : Manet, Histoire catalographique . Editions Montaigne, Paris 1931.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The German title Distel can be found in Sabine Fehlemann: Von der Heydt-Museum , p. 130, the title Die Distel carried the picture in the exhibition Cézanne, Manet, Schuch in Dortmund 2000, see Brigitte Buberl: Cézanne, Manet, Schuch , P. 212. In the German translation of the catalog raisonné by Sandra Orienti, the image is labeled with the plural thistles , as in the French catalog raisonnés, see Sandra Orienti: Edouard Manet, catalog raisonné , volume I, p. 58.
  2. ↑ The French title Chardons (plural) can be found in the catalog raisonné of Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet, Catalog raisonné , No. 16. The Von der Heydt-Museum gives the French title Chardon (singular), see Sabine Fehlemann: Von der Heydt-Museum , p. 488
  3. ↑ Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Manet: Immediately paint what you see in Brigitte Buberl: Cézanne, Manet, Schuch , p. 118.
  4. ↑ Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Manet: Immediately paint what you see in Brigitte Buberl: Cézanne, Manet, Schuch , p. 118.
  5. ^ Christiane Lange: Still Life in Ulrich Pohlmann: A New Art? Another nature! - Photography and painting in the 19th century , p. 120.
  6. ^ Sabine Fehlemann: Von der Heydt-Museum , p. 488
  7. ^ Original French text printed in Sabine Fehlemann: Von der Heydt-Museum , p. 488.
  8. ^ Adolphe Tabarant: Manet, histoire catalographique , p. 164.
  9. ↑ Paul Jamot, Georges Wildenstein: Manet ,: l'oeuvre de l'artiste, catalog critique , No. 21
  10. ↑ Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , p. 38, no. 16.
  11. ↑ Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Manet: Immediately paint what you see in Brigitte Buberl: Cézanne, Manet, Schuch , p. 118.
  12. ^ Gerhard Finckh: Edouard Manet , p. 197.
  13. ↑ Brigitte Buberl: Cézanne, Manet, Schuch , p. 213.