On the beach (Manet)

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On the beach by
Édouard Manet , 1873
59.6 × 73.2 cm
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay , Paris

On the beach (French: Sur la plage ) is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet . The picture, painted in oil on canvas in the style of Impressionism , was created during the summer holidays of 1873 in Berck . It shows Manet's wife Suzanne and his brother Eugène on the beach on the Normandy coast . The painting is 59.6 cm high and 73.2 cm wide. It belongs to the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris .

Image description

The picture shows a summer scene on the beach of Berck on the Normandy coast. In the foreground, Manet has portrayed his wife Suzanne and his brother Eugène in close-up, using a painting style typical of Impressionism in fleeting brushstrokes. Behind the people, the view extends over the beach and the turquoise-blue, foam-crowned sea. Several sailing ships glide near the high horizon line that separates the sea from the light blue sky above.

The scenery is painted in "shimmering [m] sunlight" and Eugène Manet's shadow falling to the right indicates the afternoon as the time of day. The art historian Theodore Reff sees a situation here as if the painter were sitting with the portrayed. The bodies shown almost fill the picture from the left to the right. The figures appear as a triangular composition and are aligned with one another. Suzanne Manet is portrayed from the side, slightly from behind, in a sitting position. Her back points to the left edge of the picture, while her legs reach close to the right edge of the picture. She is wearing a long, light gray coat with a white and red summer shoe peeking out. On her head she wears a white hat with a black border . It is fastened behind the head with a black ribbon tied in a bow. A light, transparent veil falling from the tip of her hat protects Madame Manet from wind and sand. Her face, which appears as a silhouette below, is directed downwards at a book that she is holding in her hands in front of her. A little further away, his brother Eugène has taken a semi-recumbent position with his back to the right edge of the picture. He supports the upper body on the bent left forearm. With his legs stretched out towards the sea, his body appears to be greatly shortened in perspective. He is wearing a dark suit or coat, a blue-and-white striped shirt pokes out on his arm and collar, and a dark cap covers his head. His dark clothes are in clear contrast to the light clothes of his sister-in-law next to him. Eugène Manet, who wears a full brown beard, looks ahead of him in the direction of the light sand. Both people do not interact with each other. The author John Leighton notes that Édouard Manet's “focus is on the nuance of mood, posture and personality of his characters.” He clearly sees the painter's “compelling endeavor to capture a fleeting moment”. The painting is signed “Manet” lower right.

Background to the creation of the painting

Édouard Manet came to Berck on the Côte d'Opale with the family during the summer holidays of 1873 . In addition to the painter, his wife Suzanne, his brother Eugène and his mother were part of the tour group. The usually present son of his wife, Léon Leenhoff , who was just completing his military service, was missing . At that time, Berck was little more than a fishing village and the holiday guests could not expect such a sophisticated atmosphere as in the nearby seaside resort of Boulogne , where the Manet family had spent their holidays several times in the 1860s. The Manets probably didn't live in a hotel in Berck, but rented a house there. The summer vacation in Berck was the first vacation stay of the Manets on the Channel coast after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 and the Paris Commune . Since grains of sand were discovered in the color of Am Strand , art historians assume that Manet painted the picture on site. However, it is possible that some parts of the painting, such as the background, were only completed later in the Paris studio. The weeks in Berck were a very productive phase for Manet. He painted a number of pictures there, most of which are views of the sea with sailboats. In addition to the painting Am Strand with the portraits of the woman and the brother, he created another family picture in Berck with Die Schwalben ( Foundation EG Bührle Collection , Zurich). Here his wife can be seen together with his mother in a meadow near the village, the painter painting the figures from a clearer distance. Both people have taken a seated position in this picture and also appear in high-contrast in light and dark clothing. Suzanne Manet, sitting on the right this time, wears the same appearance as in the picture on the beach . Manet submitted the painting The Swallows to the Paris Salon in 1874, but was rejected by the jury.

Models for Manet's painting On the Beach can be found primarily in his contemporaries Eugène Boudin and Claude Monet . Boudin created a number of beach pictures in Trouville , including, for example, holiday guests on the beach in Trouville ( Minneapolis Institute of Art ) from 1864. Here he shows a panorama of the lively beach scene in which numerous people populate the scene. Similarly, Manet had painted On the Beach at Boulogne-sur-Mer ( Virginia Museum of Fine Arts , Richmond) in 1868 . As if in a collage, he put various figures together to form an ensemble of beach actors. It was only in his beach pictures of the 1880s that Boudin painted people in close-up, as can be seen in Manet's Am Strand . An example of this is Boudin's 1887 painting On the Beach, Trouville ( National Gallery of Art , Washington, DC).

Claude Monet also created beach pictures in Trouville, where he was staying in 1870. In his painting The Beach at Trouville ( National Gallery , London) Monet shows - like his friend Manet three years later - two people seated on the beach. Monet's figures also fill the entire width of the picture and the light and dark clothing is just as rich in contrast as in Manet's On the Beach . The art historian Françoise Cachin sees Monet as having "the impression of a beach atmosphere, of fleeting moments", while in Manet she recognizes "a more monumental conception focused on the motif". In Manets Am Strand, Cachin also sees the influence of Japanese prints, which she recognizes above all on the high horizon with the narrow strip of sky and the flat representation of the figures.

When composing Am Strand, Manet also used his own work as a model. In his work Am Strand , his brother Eugène adopts a similar stance as he did in the painting Breakfast in the Green from 1863 . In this picture, created in the studio, Eugène can also be seen sitting with his leg stretched out and supporting his upper body on his left forearm. Here, too, his dark clothing contrasts with the female figure next to him - in this case the naked Victorine Meurent .

  • Édouard Manet:
    The Swallows , 1873

  • Eugène Boudin:
    Vacationers on the Beach at Trouville , 1864

  • Édouard Manet:
    On the beach at Boulogne-sur-Mer , 1868

  • Eugène Boudin:
    On the Beach, Trouville , 1887

  • Claude Monet:
    The Beach at Trouville ,
    1870

Provenance

Through the mediation of his friend Théodore Duret , Manet Am Strand was able to sell it to the art collector Henri Rouart for 1,500 francs on November 8, 1873, just a few weeks after the painting was completed . After Rouart's death, his collection was auctioned off in December 1912 at the Manzi-Joyant gallery in Paris. The collector Farjard acquired Manet's beach picture for 92,000 francs at this auction. The painting later found its way into the art collection of the fashion designer Jacques Doucet . He had a striking red and black lacquered frame made for the picture in the Art Deco style , in which it is still shown today. By inheritance, the painting came into the possession of his nephew Jean-Édouard Dubrujeaud, who left it to the Louvre in 1953 . Am Strand has been part of the Musée d'Orsay collection since 1986 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information according to various references, for example in Stéphane Guégan: Manet, inventeur du moderne , p. 278. Deviating from this, the Musée d'Orsay gives the dimensions 60 x 73.5 cm on its website .
  2. ↑ a b c d John Leighton: Edouard Manet – Meeresimpressionen , p. 64.
  3. ↑ a b Juliet Wilson-Bareau, David Degener: Manet and the Sea , at 82.
  4. ↑ a b c Theodore Reff: Manet and modern Paris, p. 162.
  5. ↑ Wilson-Bareau and Degener suspected that the shoes were espadrilles. See Juliet Wilson-Bareau, David Degener: Manet and the Sea , p. 82.
  6. ^ Françoise Cachin: On the beach in Françoise Cachin, Charles S. Moffett and Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Manet: 1832-1883 , p. 344.
  7. ^ A b Françoise Cachin, Charles S. Moffett and Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Manet: 1832-1883 , p. 345.