At Père Lathuille, outdoors

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At Père Lathuille, outdoors (Édouard Manet)
At Père Lathuille, outdoors
Édouard Manet , 1879
Oil on canvas
92 × 112 cm
Musée des Beaux-Arts (Tournai)

At Père Lathuille, outdoors ( French Chez le père Lathuille, en plein air ) is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet . The picture, painted in oil on canvas in the style of Impressionism in 1879, is 92 cm high and 112 cm wide. You can see a young couple flirting in the garden of a Paris inn. In this painting Manet combined the subjects of genre painting , portraiture and landscape painting . He exhibited the picture in 1880 at the Salon de Paris , where it received various reviews from critics. The painting belongs to the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tournai .

Image description

The location of the painting's action can be deduced from the picture title At Père Lathuille, in the open air : Manet shows the garden area of ​​the Père Lathuile restaurant at 7 avenue de Clichy in Paris. In the foreground there is a young couple at a table. On the right, a curved garden path connects the foreground with the rear garden area. A waiter is standing on this path and has taken a waiting position at a discreet distance from the couple. Another person can be found some distance away on the left in the background.

The young couple forms the center of the picture. They have come together at a white table that extends into the picture from the left. The woman shown in profile is sitting very close to the table in an upright, somewhat stiff-looking position. She stretched her forearms and hands on the tablecloth on either side of a plate in front of her. She wears a brown checkered dress with long sleeves, fingerless gloves and a white scarf or a decorative bow around her neck. Her brown hair is up; A small hat with a floral decoration forms the end. In her modest attire and reserved demeanor, she looks at the young man next to her. He is dressed in a sand-colored jacket from which the sleeves and collar of a white shirt protrude. A very large blue-black bow tied around the collar is striking. The hair curled to the middle part shimmers in a similar color. His face, inclined towards the young woman, is characterized by a narrow mustache over his closed mouth and wide open eyes with which he looks at the young woman from below. His position at the table is not entirely clear. He may be crouching next to her for a moment; the author Hans Körner describes the posture as "crouched down". The upper body of the young man points frontally to the viewer, with his arms he leans on the table and the back of the chair of the young woman. In this extended position, it takes up almost the entire width of the picture. His right arm is bent on the table and grasps a glass standing there. With his left arm he reaches around the young woman and has placed his hand on the back of her chair. Körner calls this attitude “possessive”, for the art historian Ina Conzen the quickly painted hand on the chair conveys “impetuous dynamism”. The young man waits for her the moment she has finished the main course and dessert is ready. Only one person is visible on the table. The young woman may have been served fruit that cannot be defined more precisely by the sketchy style of painting. There is a matching glass with champagne, the corresponding bottle is kept in a cooler on the edge of the picture.

An older waiter pauses at the right edge of the picture. He is clearly recognizable as an employee of the restaurant with a dark jacket, white apron and napkin under his arm. In his right hand he is carrying a brass-colored coffee pot, with which he may have been on the way to the table in the foreground. He does not look directly at the scenery at the table, but looks past it to the viewer. He virtually observes the viewer looking at what is happening at the table. The garden's curved gravel path runs behind the waiter and is flanked by two lampposts. The green vegetation of a hedge or bushes rises to the right of the path. Behind it you can see a bright house wall with the closed windows on the ground floor. In the background between the couple stands a bony tree, the thick trunk of which splits into two parts at head height. The tree marks the separation between the left and right halves of the picture, possibly also symbolically represents the dividing line between the couple in the foreground. Behind the right shoulder of the young man at the table a light green pillar rises up, where it is cut off from the edge of the picture. The function of this pillar remains unclear. It could frame a sheet of glass or serve as a support for a canopy. In the picture, the pillar has the function of separating the couple scene from what is happening in the background on the left; on the other hand, the pillar is part of a network of horizontal and horizontal lines that give the painting stability. In addition to the pillar, these include the lanterns on the right, the edge of the table in the foreground and the lines of the rear architecture on the left. There is a building with a front awning and white-covered tables underneath. Another employee of the restaurant goes about his work there without noticing what is happening in the foreground. In addition to the lush vegetation of the summer garden, there is a water jet from a fountain on the left as an invigorating element, which also fits into the network of picture lines.

In this painting Manet uses the bright colors of summer, which he applies in many places with short strokes and dots. Both the painting style and the subject matter are typical of the Impressionist style. This also includes a lighting control system with numerous reflections, such as those found on the tablecloth, the champagne gal, the jacket and hair of the young suitor or on the waiter's clothes. The painting is signed and dated lower left on the tablecloth “Manet, 1879”.

About the creation of the painting

Édouard Manet: The Waiter , 1879

The then 22-year-old Louis Gauthier-Lathuile was the model for the figure of the young man sitting at the table in the painting. He was the son of the restaurant owner and later reported to Manet's biographer Adolphe Tabarant details about the creation of the picture. Accordingly, Manet, who was a regular guest in the restaurant, was inspired to the picture by Gauthier-Lathuile's dragoon uniform . The restaurant owner's son served in the army in the summer of 1879 and stopped by to visit his father's restaurant. The female part was initially played by actress Ellen Andrée , who, however, only appeared sporadically at the sessions because of theater rehearsals. Manet replaced Ellen Andrée after a few sessions with Judith French, a cousin of the composer Jacques Offenbach . After a few sessions, Manet exchanged Gauthier-Lathuile's uniform for his own sand-colored painter's smock, which appears in the painting as Gauthier-Lathuile's casual summer jacket. The portrayed person has reported that Manet scratched parts of the layers of paint from the picture again in order to implement his changed ideas. In addition, it is known through Gauthier-Lathuile that Manet painted the picture in July 1879 in front of the motif, actually as the picture title describes it, in the garden of the Père Lathuile restaurant . The addition en plein air comes from Manet himself and only in this painting did he formulate such a supplementary explanation in the picture title. He thereby underlined both his painting style outdoors and his artistic closeness to his Impressionist painter friends.

Manet has been working with Parisian café scenes as a pictorial theme since around 1877. For example, individual portraits such as Die Pflaume ( National Gallery of Art , Washington DC) or complex arrangements such as the various motifs from Brasserie Reichshoffen were created. Such representations of modern life can also be found in a similar form in Manet's painter colleagues Edgar Degas or Pierre-Auguste Renoir and have models in French painting of the 18th century, such as François Boucher or Antoine Watteau . There are no preparatory drawings or oil sketches for the painting At Père Lathuille, in the open air . However, there is a portrait of Louis Gauthier-Lathuile, which Manet executed in pastel around the same time. In this portrait, also known as The Waiter , the son of the restaurant owner is shown as Maître d'hôtel , i.e. in his actual function in the restaurant and not in a couple relationship arranged by Manet. Manet depicted such couple relationships in a series of pictures, for example in Im Wintergarten ( National Gallery , Berlin), in Argenteuil (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tournai ) or in the painting Im Boot ( Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York City).

  • Édouard Manet:
    The Plum , around 1878

  • Édouard Manet:
    In the Winter Garden , 1879

  • Édouard Manet:
    Argenteuil , 1875

  • Édouard Manet:
    In the boat , 1875

reception

Édouard Manet: Portrait of Antonin Proust , 1880

Manet exhibited the painting At Père Lathuille, outdoors in the spring of 1880 in the Paris Salon. He showed it together with the portrait of Antonin Proust ( Toledo Museum of Art ) and was able to show different aspects of his artistic work. The rather conservative-looking portrait of his school friend Antonin Proust stood in contrast to the impressionistic garden picture at Père Lathuille, outdoors with its portrayal of modern life. After Manet's pictures had repeatedly been rejected by the salon's jury in previous years, the acceptance of his two pictures in 1880 alone was a success for the artist. While the portrait was rather positively received by the critics, there was Vom Père Lathuille for Beim Père Lathuille , mixed reactions outdoors . The critic Armand Silvestre praised the modernity of the picture, an aspect that the art historian Paul Mantz was just criticizing. He found the young man's hair too blue, the woman dressed unfashionably and generally the subject unsuitable. One of the defenders of the painting was the writer Joris-Karl Huysmans : “The modern that I spoke of, here it is! This is life as it is reproduced without emphasis, and because of its truth, this is a bold work, unique in terms of modern painting, in this rich salon. ”The Berlin museum director Hugo von Tschudi also praised the quality of the picture : “Never before has Manet succeeded to the same extent in reproducing the light-soaked air that trembles over the gravel path, weaves its blue tones into the shadows and softly flows around all contours.” The art writer Julius Meier-Graefe arranged the painting in a row the important works of painting: "The form evokes vague memories of old masters in us, is believable because we believe in these masters."

Provenance

The painting was in the painter's possession until Manet's death. When his estate was auctioned on February 4 and 5, 1884 at the Hôtel Drouot auction house , it went to Manet's friend Théodore Duret for 5,000  francs . In 1894 he had the painting auctioned off with other parts of his collection in the art dealer of Georges Petit . On this occasion, it was bought by the opera singer and art collector Jean-Baptiste Faure , who owned one of the largest Manet collections with more than 60 works. In 1896 the picture came to the hotel owner and art collector Henri van Cutsem from Brussels via the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel for 18,000 francs . He planned his own art museum in Tournai for his art collection , but this was not built until his death in 1904. He left his art collection to his friend, sculptor Guillaume Charlier , who moved it to the newly opened Musée de Beaux-Arts in Tournai in 1927.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ German and French image titles from Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists , p. 239.
  2. ↑ The name of the restaurant and the owner is Lathuile (with an l in the middle of the word). The spelling Lathuille (with a double ll ) comes from Manet. In the literature, the wrong spelling Lathuille was used repeatedly for the restaurant and the owner. Various authors have pointed out this problem. See Ronald Pickvance: Manet , p. 236 or Stéphane Guégan: Manet, inventeur du moderne , p. 222.
  3. ↑ Hans Körner: Edouard Manet, Dandy, Flaneur, Maler , p. 174.
  4. ↑ Hans Körner: Edouard Manet, Dandy, Flaneur, Maler , p. 174.
  5. ↑ Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists , p. 130.
  6. ↑ Stéphane Guégan: Manet, inventeur du moderne , p. 222.
  7. ↑ Louis Gauthier-Lathuile was born in 1857. See Mary Anne Stevens: Manet, portraying life , p. 200.
  8. ↑ Hans Graber: Edouard Manet: According to own and third-party testimonials , pp. 252-253.
  9. ^ Mary Anne Stevens: Manet, portraying life , p. 201.
  10. ↑ Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists , p. 128
  11. ↑ Stéphane Guégan: Manet, inventeur du modern . P. 222.
  12. ^ Mary Anne Stevens: Manet, portraying life , p. 201.
  13. ^ Paul Mantz: Le Salon V in Le Temps of May 6, 1880.
  14. ↑ Joris-Karl Huysmans in La Réforme of July 1, 1880, German translation from Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists , p. 128.
  15. ^ Hugo von Tschudi: Edouard Manet , p. 38
  16. ↑ Julius Meier-Graefe: Edouard Manet , p. 270.
  17. ^ Adolphe Tabarant: Manet et ses Œuvres , p. 353.