Portrait of the dancer Rosita Mauri

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Portrait of the dancer Rosita Mauri
(Young Woman in Pink)
Édouard Manet , around 1879
85 × 65 cm
oil on canvas
Pushkin Museum (Koehler Collection), Moscow

The portrait of the dancer Rosita Mauri also Young Woman in Pink ( French Portrait de la danseuse Rosita Mauri or Jeune femme en rose ) is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet . In this picture, painted around 1879, he portrayed the mistress of his school friend Antonin Proust . Manet shows Rosita Mauri , prima ballerina at the Paris Opera , not on stage, but wearing a dressing gown in a private moment. The sketch, executed in oil on canvas, measures 85 × 65 cm and is located in the Moscow Pushkin Museum as so-called looted art .

Image description

Édouard Manet: Lola de Valence , 1862, Musée d'Orsay

The painting shows the Catalan dancer Rosita Mauri standing in the center of the picture. Executed as a hip picture, the body is cut off from the lower edge of the picture. The figure is aligned to the left edge of the picture and the head is turned slightly over the left shoulder towards the viewer so that the face appears as a half profile. The background is kept almost monochrome in shades of beige and gray, from which the pale pink of the clothes is only set off with fleetingly sketched lines. This fuzzy separation of foreground and background is particularly evident in the area of ​​the buttocks through a sweeping vertical brushwork, in which broad strokes extend from the background to the clothing. In large parts of the painting appears unfinished - only the head of Rosita Mauri is more finely worked out. Her blue-black short hairstyle leaves the left ear free. The slightly curly hair is styled in a middle part that is draped far into the forehead. The same black can also be found on the wide eyebrows. Below are the brown eyes surrounded by gray shadow areas. The light falls from the right on the face so that the right half of the face - and also the left corner of the picture below - is in the shadow. The reddish lips stand out from the amber complexion of the face, the contours of which appear blurred on the shadowy side.

The portrait situation remains indistinct, not only because of the indefinite background, but also because of the sketchy execution of the clothing. In contrast to Manet's portrait of the Spanish dancer Lola de Valence from 1862, which he portrayed on stage in folkloric dance costume, the portrait of Rosita Mauri lacks any prop that characterizes the sitter as a dancer. If the name of the person portrayed had not been passed down, there would be no reference to the profession of prima ballerina. Rosita Mauri wears a kind of dressing gown, the few recognizable details of which include a stand-up collar that surrounds the chin, a bow that falls over the chest and ruffled sleeves. The area of ​​the left hand is also only vaguely outlined and its right pedant can hardly be made out. In the absence of any spatial references, it remains unclear where the sitter is. Neither a domestic situation, which would be common for the elevator in a dressing gown, nor an indication of a theater wardrobe - conceivable for a dancer - can be seen. In this picture Manet does not show the celebrated stage star of the Paris Opera, but Rosita Mauri in a private moment.

Authors like the art historian Sandra Orienti suspect that Manet did not finish the portrait because the dancer had little time for portrait sessions due to her duties at the theater. This is also supported by the artist's missing signature. The words Manet , which can be seen in the picture below on the right , were only applied by his wife Suzanne after the painter's death . The painting, referred to by Adolphe Tabarant and other art historians as esquisse (study), was later praised by various authors precisely for its sketchiness. In 1909 Georg Biermann spoke of an “enchanting ease of doing” and recognized this as a reproduction of her “enchanting life”. Julius Meier-Graefe , the author of the first German-language Manet biography, commented accordingly on the painting: “He created miracles with hardly wetted surfaces, such as B. with his Rosita Mauri, which was lighter than any of his pastels. "

A friend's mistress

Born in Catalonia, Rosita Mauri already had international success as a ballet dancer in the 1870s when she engaged Charles Gounod for the Paris Opera in 1878 . The prima ballerina soon got to know numerous artists, including the painter Edgar Degas , who portrayed her in one of her roles on the stage of the Palais Garnier . A short time later, her long-term love affair began with the politician Antonin Proust , a friend of Édouard Manet since they were at school. Proust brought his girlfriend to Manet's studio, where most of his portraits and probably also the portrait of the dancer were created.

In his Manet biography, Proust hides the dancer, her encounter with Manet and the painting. Manet also does not have any documents on the creation of the picture. This led to different dating of the picture. Julius Meier-Graefe gives "1876/77" as the time of origin, which other art historians join. These early dates ignore the fact that Rosita Mauri was not performing in Paris during this period and that the relationship with Proust only began later. The assignment “1879”, as done by other art historians, is more likely, but the chronological classification of the Pushkin Museum “1880” is also possible.

The women painted by Manet mostly came from family, friends or acquaintances. In addition to portraits of his wife, portraits of the wives of Émile Zola and Georges Clemenceau were also created . In addition, as Werner Hofmann notes, “Manet passed on to us the features of many other women who enjoyed their dazzling fame between boudoir and bohemian, between demimonde and money aristocracy”. Rosita Mauri was not the first mistress of a friend to be portrayed by Manet. As early as 1862, Manet showed the lover of his friend Charles Baudelaire with the portrait of Jeanne Duval . Duval, a dancer and actress, was one of the first female characters from artistic circles to portray Manet. Especially in the last years of his life he painted a number of such portraits, which were executed in oil on canvas or as pastel. Among the women repeatedly portrayed was Méry Laurent , actress and muse of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé . In addition to other actresses such as Ellen Andrée , Valtesse de la Bigne , Léontine Massin and Marie Colombier , the opera singer Émilie Ambre , formerly the lover of King Wilhelm III of the Netherlands , also found in Manet's studio . , and the operetta singer Henriette Hauser , the mistress of the Dutch Crown Prince Wilhelm , for portrait sessions.

  • Madame Zola
    1879, pastel,
    Musée d'Orsay, Paris

  • Valtesse de la Bigne
    1879, pastel,
    Metropolitan Museum, New York

  • Marie Colombier
    around 1879, pastel,
    Burrell Collection, Glasgow

  • Jeanne Duval
    1862, oil on canvas,
    Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest

  • Henriette Hauser as Nana
    1877, oil on canvas,
    Hamburger Kunsthalle

  • Émilie Ambre in the role of Carmen
    around 1879, oil on canvas,
    Philadelphia Museum of Art

The pastel bust portraits of Madame Zola and the actresses Valtesse de la Bigne and Marie Colombier, around 1879, the possible time when the portrait of the dancer Rosita Mauri was created , show the subjects in bourgeois everyday clothing, from which no particular intimate incident can be derived. The early portrait of Jeanne Duval, who is arranged on a sofa in a white dress, also gives no indication of her love life with Manet's friend Baudelaire. Only Henriette Hauser, who was the model for Nana , portrayed Manet half-dressed in the company of a gentleman in evening attire, thus giving an indication of an amorous encounter.

What is striking about the various female stage actresses captured by Manet is that he almost never shows them on stage. In addition to the Lola de Valence from 1862, it was the opera singer Émilie Ambre, who was friends with Manet, whom he portrayed in 1879 in the portrait of Émilie Ambre in the role of Carmen in colorful stage costume. The private presentation of Rosita Mauri in a dressing gown, which can be read as an indication of the intimate relationship between Manet's friend and his lover, is different.

reception

The painting Portrait of the Dancer Rosita Mauri remained hidden from the public for more than 100 years. At first it was in various private collections and then stored in a Moscow depot for decades. Accordingly, the painting was received little. Only the painter, sculptor and poet Hans Arp made written reference to Manet's painting. In the magazine Der Sturm on December 1, 1913, he published the poem From the last painting . In it he referred to several works by various artists and wrote about Manet's picture: “You breathe in the trembling light on the belly of Budda and in the veils of Rosita Mauri von Manet.” Arp, who may have seen Manet's painting in a private collection in Germany had, interpreted Manet's sketchy execution of the clothes of Rosita Mauri as an oriental veil and failed to recognize that the prima ballerina of the Paris Opera tended to act in the classical ballet repertoire.

Provenance

The painting was in the artist's possession until his death in 1883 and was given the number 70 in the estate inventory, where it was referred to as Petite femme rose (Jeanne) . With Jeanne was possibly meant Jeanne Demarsy , a friend of Manet, whom he had painted several times in the last years of his life. At the auction of Manet's works on February 4 and 5, 1884 in the Paris auction house Hôtel Drouot , the singer Jean-Baptiste Faure bought the painting, now called Jeune femme en rose, esquisse , for 400 francs . The celebrated baritone was already one of the most avid collectors of his works during Manet's lifetime and brought together more than 60 paintings by the artist. A Paris collector named Blum is noted for the picture in 1902. The painting came to the collection of the writer and publisher Alfred Walter Heymel in Bremen through the art dealers Paul Durand-Ruel and Paul Cassirer . When he got into economic difficulties around 1910, he gave the picture to the Munich gallery Thannhauser , which sold it in 1912 to the Berlin industrialist Bernhard Koehler .

In 1912 Koehler wrote to Wassily Kandinsky that he regarded Manet as the “originator of the whole modern trend” and that his collection without a Manet painting was “like a building without a foundation”. After Koehler's death in 1927, his son inherited the extensive art collection. During the Second World War he gave some of the pictures to the depot of the Berlin National Gallery to protect them from bombing . From here, the works of art in the Koehler Collection came to the Soviet Union as so-called looted art during the post-war chaos , where they were stored in secret depots for around 50 years. It was not until 1995 that the Moscow Pushkin Museum publicly exhibited the works of art it owned, including the portrait of the dancer Rosita Mauri from the Koehler Collection. The painting has since been presented as part of the museum's collection, although the ownership structure between the Russian side and the German heirs has not yet been clarified.

literature

  • Hans Arp : Collected poems. Volume I: 1903-1939. Die Arche, Zurich 1963.
  • Georg Biermann: Der Cicerone, bi-monthly publication for artists, art lovers and collectors. Volume 1, Klinkhardt and Biermann, Leipzig 1909.
  • Beth Archer Brombert: Edouard Manet, rebel in a frock coat. Little, Brown and Co., Boston 1996, ISBN 0-316-10947-9 .
  • Théodore Duret : Histoire de Edouard Manet et de son oeuvre. Bernheim, Paris 1926.
  • Werner Hofmann : Nana, Myth and Reality. DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1973, ISBN 3-7701-0686-5 .
  • Galerie Matthiessen (ed.): Exhibition Edouard Manet, 1832–1883, paintings, pastels, watercolors, drawings. Matthiessen Gallery, Berlin 1928.
  • Julius Meier-Graefe : Impressionists: Guys, Manet, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Cézanne. Piper, Munich 1907.
  • Julius Meier-Graefe: Edouard Manet. Piper, Munich 1912.
  • Sandra Orienti: The painted work of Edouard Manet. German Book Association, Stuttgart 1972.
  • Henri Perruchot: Manet, A Biography. German Book Association, Berlin 1962.
  • Andrea Pophanken, Felix Billeter: Modernism and its collectors, French art in private German ownership from the Empire to the Weimar Republic. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-05-003546-3 .
  • Antonin Proust : Édouard Manet, memories. Cassirer, Berlin 1917.
  • Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné. Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris / Lausanne 1975.
  • Adolphe Tabarant : Manet, histoire catalographique. Montaigne, Paris 1931.
  • Emil Waldmann : The portrait in the 19th century. Propylaea, Berlin 1921.
  • Emil Waldmann: Edouard Manet. Cassirer, Berlin 1923.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In German-language literature, the French figurative Jeune femme en rose - usually with the addition (Rosita Mauri) - is used, which is also found in the catalog raisonné of Denis Rouart and Daniel Wildenstein, p. 214. The German title Portrait of the dancer Rosita Mauri is noted in the exhibition catalog of the Galerie Matthiesen: Galerie Matthiessen: Exhibition Edouard Manet. P. 33. The French equivalent to this, Portrait de la danseuse Rosita Mauri, is in Julius Meier-Graefe: Impressionists. P. 81. Young woman in pink is Sandra Orienti in Edouard Manet's painted work. P. 111.
  2. ^ A b Emil Waldmann: The portrait in the 19th century. P. 164.
  3. ↑ Referred to as “peignoir rose” in Théodore Duret: Histoire de Edouard Manet et de son oeuvre. P. 111.
  4. ↑ Sandra Orienti: The painted work of Edouard Manet. P. 111.
  5. ^ Julius Meier-Graefe: Manet. P. 273.
  6. ^ Adolphe Tabarant: Manet. P. 584.
  7. ↑ Georg Biermann in The Cicerone. P. 323.
  8. ^ Julius Meier-Graefe: Manet. P. 272.
  9. ↑ Sandra Orienti: The painted work of Edouard Manet. P. 111.
  10. ^ Antonin Proust: Édouard Manet, memories .
  11. ↑ Julius Meier-Graefe: Impressionists: Guys, Manet, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Cézanne. P. 81.
  12. ↑ Emil Waldmann states "around 1876" in Emil Waldmann: Edouard Manet. P. 90; "1877" is noted in the Rouart / Wildenstein catalog raisonné. See Denias Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné. P. 214.
  13. ↑ See Sandra Orienti: The painted work of Edouard Manet. P. 111; Henri Perruchot: Edouard Manet. P. 75; Beth Archer Brombert: Edouard Manet, rebel in a frock coat. P. 415.
  14. ↑ Information about the painting on the Pushkin Museum website. Retrieved April 5, 2012.
  15. ↑ Werner Hofmann: Nana. P. 91.
  16. ↑ Hans Arp: Collected poems. P. 20.
  17. ^ Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , number 265
  18. ^ Letter from Bernhard Koehler to Wassily Kandinsky dated September 6, 1912, kept in the Cente Pompidou, Paris. Quoted from Silvia Schmidt-Bauer: The Bernhard Koehler Collection. In: Andrea Pophanken, Felix Billeter: Modernism and its collectors. P. 275.
  19. ^ Silvia Schmidt-Bauer: The Bernhard Koehler Collection. In: Andrea Pophanken, Felix Billeter: Modernism and its collectors. P. 283.