Etude d'arbres
Étude d'arbres is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet . The work, which was painted in oil on canvas around 1859, is 54 cm high and 30 cm wide. It shows a study of trees in a hilly river landscape. The picture, which belongs to the artist's early work, was probably created after studies of nature in the Paris area and served as preparatory work for other paintings by Manet. Étude d'arbres belongs to a private collection.
Image description
The portrait, designed as a portrait, shows a sketchy landscape. In the middle there is a group of trees, the type of which cannot be clearly determined. Several brown trunks protrude from the ground, where they are cut off from the edge of the picture. From the trunks there are thin branches with a few dark green leaves in the upper area. At the base of the trunks there are also some branches with light green leaves. The ground around the trunks is painted in green ocher with thin brushstrokes. A grass growth could be indicated here. Behind the trees up to the left edge of the picture a gently rising hill with light green vegetation can be seen, on which the elongated shadow of the trees falls. The low sun throws its light onto the landscape from the right outside the picture. A river landscape is shown in the background on the right. The water, painted in blue-green, extends to the horizon line. The sky above the river and hilly landscape has a varied color scheme. The palette ranges from blue, gray, purple and white to yellow and brown tones. The picture is signed "EM" lower right.
Background to the creation of the picture
The painting belongs to Manet's early work. It is not known exactly when the picture was taken. It is known that Manet's godchild, Léon Leenhoff , said that the picture was a study in preparation for the painting Breakfast in the Green from 1863 . If Léon Leenhoff's statements are correct, Étude d'arbres should also have been made around 1863. As in Étude d'arbres, there are trees and a river landscape in the background in Breakfast in the Green . During breakfast in the countryside , this background was identified as the wooded landscape of the Île Saint-Ouen . This former island in the Seine was just a few kilometers from Gennevilliers , where the Manet family owned land. Manet had prepared several preliminary studies for breakfast in the country , including the oil study Der Fischfang ( Von der Heydt Museum , Wuppertal).
In contrast to the information provided by Léon Leenhoff, Manet's biographer Adolphe Tabarant assumes that Manet painted Étude d'arbres as early as 1859. Although Tabarant gave no reason for this dating, other art historians joined him. Even before breakfast in the country , Manet had painted several pictures in which he chose the landscape on the Seine near the Île Saint-Ouen for the background. These include the paintings The Fish ( Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York), The Surprised Nymph ( Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes , Buenos Aires) and The Students of Salamanca ( Pola Museum of Art , Hakone), created between 1859 and 1863 . It is therefore entirely possible that Étude d'arbres was created as early as 1859 and served as a preliminary study for one or more pictures.
Provenance
The painting was in the artist's possession until Manet's death in 1883. It was auctioned with the Manet estate on February 4 and 5, 1884 at the Hôtel Drouot auction house and went to a Mr de la Narde from Paris for 135 francs. The picture then came to Belgium, first to the Devillez Collection in Brussels and then to the Leten Collection in Ghent. Leten loaned Étude d'arbres in 1953 for the exhibition La Peinture dans les Collections Gantoises in the Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent - so far the only museum exhibition of the picture. On May 1, 1996, the picture was put up for auction in the New York branch of Christie's auction house and changed hands for $ 266,500. The new owner was not subsequently announced. In 2009, the picture reappeared in Italy when the Italian tax investigators discovered it in the basement of an apartment in Parma . The entrepreneur Calisto Tanzi had - in the context of the financial scandal surrounding the food company Parmalat - hidden the picture there with other works of art from the tax authorities. On October 29, 2019, the former art collection of Calisto Tanzi was auctioned at the Pandolfini Casa d'Aste auction house in Florence. The painting Étude d'arbres went to an unknown bidder for 495,500 euros .
literature
- Françoise Cachin : Manet . DuMont, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-7701-2791-9 .
- Julius Meier-Graefe : Edouard Manet . Piper, Munich 1912.
- Sandra Orienti: The painted work of Edouard Manet . German Book Association, Stuttgart 1972.
- Réunion des Musées Nationaux Paris and Metropolitan Museum of Art New York (ed.): Manet . Exhibition catalog, German edition: Frölich and Kaufmann, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-88725-092-3 .
- Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné . Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris and Lausanne 1975.
- Adolphe Tabarant : Manet et ses œuvres . Gallimard, Paris 1947.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Julius Meier Graefe referred to the picture as Arbres, étude in 1912 , see Julius Meier-Graefe: Edouard Manet , p. 324. In the catalog raisonné of Rouart / Wildenstein from 1975 the picture is titled as Étude d'Arbes , see Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , vol. 1, p. 43. A clear German-language title is not available. In the German translation of Sandra Orienti's catalog raisonné, there is the title Trees , see Sandra Orienti: The painted work of Edouard Manet , p. 88, while Françoise Cachin's Manet biography, translated from French, gives the title of the picture with a study of the trees , see Françoise Cachin: Manet , p. 148.
- ↑ On a photograph of the painting that Fernand Lochard commissioned the family after Manet's death, Léon Leenhoff noted “Etude pour le Dejéuner sur l'herbe”. Dejéuner sur l'herbe is the French title of the painting Breakfast in the Green . See Adolphe Tabarant: Manet et ses œuvres , p. 27.
- ↑ Sandra Orienti: The painted work of Edouard Manet , p. 88.
- ^ Françoise Cachin: Breakfast in the open air in Réunion des Musées Nationaux Paris / Metropolitan Museum of Art New York: Manet , p. 166
- ↑ Adolphe Tabarant: Manet et ses œuvres , p. 27.
- ↑ Rouart / Wildenstein and Cachin also date the picture Étude d'arbres to 1859 . See Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , Vol. 1, p. 43 and Françoise Cachin: Manet , p. 148.
- ↑ Julius Meier-Graefe: Edouard Manet , p. 324.
- ↑ Information about the sale in the archive of Christie's auction house
- ↑ Article about the works of art confiscated from Tanzi with illustrations in Marilena Pirrelli: Un Picasso, un mistero e qualche falso nella collezione di quadri di Calisto Tanzi , published in Il Sole 24 Ore
- ^ Description of the painting Étude d'arbres with the auction result on the website of the auction house Pandolfini Casa d'Aste