Christ as a gardener (Manet)

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Christ as the gardener
Édouard Manet , around 1856
68 × 57 cm
oil on canvas
Private collection

Christ as a gardener , also Christ the gardener , Christ with the hoe or Christ with the hoe , ( French Le Christ Jardinier , Le Christ à la Pioche or Tête de Christ ), is a painting by Édouard Manet around the year 1856 in oil on canvas . The 68 cm high and 57 cm wide painting is trimmed as an oval . Depicted is the risen Jesus Christ , who was originally intended to be part of a larger, never completed composition on the theme of Noli me tangere . The picture belonging to Manet's early work is one of his few religious motifs. It is in a private collection and has rarely been on public display.

Image description

Édouard Manet: Le Christ jardinier , photograph of the uncut painting by Fernand Lochard

The painting shows a half-length representation of Jesus Christ as a gardener. His upper body points to the right edge of the picture, while the slightly tilted head is turned towards the viewer and his dark eyes look down over his shoulder. The mouth with the closed lips is framed by a full brown beard, while the incarnate is kept in an ocher tone. The dark curly hair on the head leaves the forehead free and falls over the shoulder on both sides. A yellowish halo with a blurred outline can be seen behind the head . Christ wears a brown robe that largely covers the body. In his left hand he is holding the handle of a field hoe which he has placed over his shoulder behind his head. The spatula blade of the hoe can be seen to the left of the head. The right hand points forward with the open inside, with the fingers partially wrapped. The background consists predominantly of an area of ​​white and blue tones sketching the sky. At the bottom left there is an ocher-colored area that could suggest a landscape. Above all, the poorly developed background makes the picture look unfinished. It is neither signed nor dated. The painting originally had a rectangular format and was not cut to today's oval until after Manet's death (see also the Provenance section).

Manet's representations of Christ

Christ as a gardener is part of Manet's early work, of which only a few paintings have survived. Manet had visited the studio of his teacher Thomas Couture until 1856 and copied works by other artists during this time. His own painting compositions are only known from the time after his training. These first drafts include two images of Christ, which are known today as Christ with a stick (also Christ with a stick ) and Christ as a gardener . Both paintings are also referred to as the head of Christ , but this does not take into account the different content of the picture. The painting Christ with a stick (private collection) shows the sitter in close-up in a narrower image detail. With him, the cut stick lies over the front shoulder. In contrast, with Christ as a gardener, the upper body can also be seen and the field hoe shouldered behind the head. In addition, there is a preparatory drawing by Manet, which outlines the body of Christ, but in which the face is not executed. The upper body and the posture of the right hand in the drawing show clear similarities to the representation in the painting Christ as a gardener .

  • Édouard Manet:
    Christ with a stick ,
    around 1856,
    private collection

  • Édouard Manet:
    Study of Christ as a Gardener , around 1856,
    private collection

The images of Christ, created around 1856, are drafts for a planned composition of images on the biblical theme of the resurrection , as described in the Gospel of John ( Joh 20,17  EU ). Accordingly, Mary Magdalene meets the risen Jesus Christ, but initially considers him a gardener. When Mary Magdalene recognizes Jesus Christ standing in front of her, she wants to kiss or hug him. Then Jesus Christ replies “Do not touch me”. This theme, also known as Noli me tangere , was taken up by various artists before Manet and the prop of the garden hoe or a spade is typical for these depictions. Manet certainly knew the two paintings Noli me tangere by Agnolo Bronzino and Fra Bartolommeo in the Louvre in Paris . With Bronzino, Christ can be seen almost unclothed in the picture and only the shroud covers parts of the body. In this picture Christ is holding a spade in his right hand and has raised his left hand in the gesture “Do not touch me”. With Fra Bartolommeo, Christ raised his right hand in the gesture “Do not touch me” and in his left hand he holds a field hoe, which, however, is not shouldered as with Manet, but hits the ground. Fra Bartolommeo shows how later Manet, Christ fully clothed. Despite some similarities, there are numerous differences between Manet's picture and the other two representations of the subject in the Louvre. In Manet, this includes the frontal view of Christ and the dominant halo.

  • Angelo Bronzino:
    Noli me tangere ,
    1561, Louvre

  • Fra Bartolomeo:
    Noli me tangere ,
    around 1506, Louvre

Manet was not a religious person and, as the author Henri Perruchot noted, he was “completely indifferent to these questions”. Nevertheless, Manet became friends with the priest Jean Hurel, who was acquainted with the Manet family. Abbé Hurel painted as an amateur in his spare time and possibly advised Manet on religious images. After the unfinished project of the motif Noli me tangere with the depiction of Christ as a gardener , it took several years before Manet turned to religious subjects again. Both the painting The Dead Christ Mourned by Angels ( Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York) and the painting The Mocking of Christ ( Art Institute of Chicago ) are motifs with which Manet sought success in the Salon de Paris . Religious topics promised recognition from the critics, but Manet's painting style could not convince the critics. There is a fragment of a previous version of the painting The Mocking of Christ , known as the half- length portrait of Christ ( Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco ). This image of Christ resembles the two depictions of Christ from around 1856 due to its detail, but has a different history. For the bust of Christ , Manet himself cut out the Christ's head from a larger painting in order to then start again with the motif on another canvas.

  • Édouard Manet:
    The Dead Christ Mourned by Angels , 1864, Metropolitan Museum of Art

  • Édouard Manet:
    The Mocking of Christ ,
    1864–65, Art Institute of Chicago

  • Édouard Manet: Half-length
    portrait of Christ ,
    1864–65, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Provenance

The provenance of the painting Christ as a Gardener is only partially known. The picture remained hidden from a broad public for many decades and very few authors knew it firsthand. In 2016 the painting was shown in the exhibition Manet - Seeing in the Hamburger Kunsthalle . The owner of the Michali Gallery in Palm Beach is noted in the exhibition catalog . Previously, the picture appeared on April 26, 2007 in an auction at the Stuttgart auction house Nagel . There is no reference to the then owner or previous owners of the painting in the auction catalog. However, it appears that the image of Christ as a gardener may have been cropped after Manet's death.

In the Manet catalog raisonnés published before 2007, there are contradicting information about Christ as a gardener and sometimes there are two pictures with the same motif. In the directory of Rouart / Wildenstein from 1975 the motif Christ as a gardener is listed as No. 14 and the dimensions are given there as 68 × 58 cm. The corresponding illustration shows a rectangular format. According to Rouart / Wildenstein, the picture was in the inventory of Manet's estate in 1883 and was listed there as no. Fernand Lochard photographed the painting when creating the estate. It is possible that later references to a rectangular format refer to this photograph. The painting was not listed at the auction of the Manet estate in 1884. Suzanne Manet , the artist's widow, had probably given the painting away to Abbé Hurel, a friend of Manet, who is mentioned by Rouart / Wildenstein as the first owner. Rouart / Wildenstein give a Marquis de Narbonne in Paris and then the collector Richard Werner from Stuttgart as the next owner . In addition, it is noted in Rouart / Wildenstein that the picture was shown in 1913 in the Munich Galerie Heinemann in the exhibition French Art of the 19th Century as No. 121.

The picture is already listed as an oval in the archive documents of Galerie Heinemann. The catalog for the 1913 exhibition shows a photo of the painting Christ as a Gardener , which shows the same image detail as the painting exhibited in Hamburg in 2016. It is unclear when and by whom the picture was cropped. The Heinemann gallery acquired the picture on December 19, 1912 from a Madame Bernard in Paris. On September 8, 1916, the gallery sold the painting to the Stuttgart collector Richard Werner.

In Adolphe Tabarant's catalog raisonné from 1947, the oval picture is referred to as Un christ à la pioche and, in contrast, a format of 63 × 50 cm is given. Tabarant first names the Marquis de Narbonne in Paris as the owner and then the Stuttgart collector Richard Werner. Tabarant also points to a sketch measuring 39 × 32 cm that the Abbé Hurel owned. This format was first described in 1902 by Manet's friend and biographer Théodore Duret . Duret names two pictures that were created as preliminary studies for a planned painting Christ and Mary Magdalene . An oval format with the dimensions 69 × 50 cm, which shows Christ as a bust portrait, and an unspecified sketch with the dimensions 39 × 32 cm. Duret has assigned separate catalog numbers for both formats. In 1967, Sandra Orienti also assumed two different paintings and named the collector Richard Werner in Stuttgart as the owner of the oval. The painting documented with a photo is assigned the dimensions 63 × 50 cm or, alternatively, 68 × 58 cm. The smaller format with the dimensions 39 × 32 cm is provided by Orienti with the photo of the rectangular painting by Lochard and marked as “remaining unknown”. Tabarant, Duret and Orienti did not give any proof of the existence of a second picture with the motif of Christ as a gardener .

literature

  • Beth Archer Brombert: Edouard Manet, rebel in a frock coat . Little, Brown and Co., Boston 1996, ISBN 0-316-10947-9 .
  • Théodore Duret : Histoire d'Édouard Manet et de son oeuvre . H. Fleury, Paris 1902.
  • Hubertus Gaßner , Viola Hildebrand-Schat (Ed.): Manet - See . Exhibition catalog Hamburger Kunsthalle, Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2016, ISBN 3-7319-0325-3 .
  • Hans Körner: Edouard Manet: dandy, flaneur, painter . Fink, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7705-2931-6 .
  • Sandra Orienti: Edouard Manet . Catalog raisonné vol. 1, Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-548-36050-5 .
  • Henri Perruchot: Manet. A biography . German Book Community Berlin, Darmstadt, Vienna 1962.
  • Ronald Pickvance : Manet . Exhibition catalog Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny 1996, ISBN 2-88443-037-7 .
  • 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

  1. ↑ Christ as a gardener is the designation in Hubertus Gaßner, Viola Hildebrand-Schat: Manet - See , p. 116. The designations Christ the gardener and Christ with the hoe can be found in Sandra Orienti: Edouard Manet . Catalog raisonné vol. 1, p. 14. There is also the designation Christ with a hoe in Henri Perruchot: Manet. A biography , p. 81. The French title Le Christ Jardinier is taken from Hubertus Gaßner, Viola Hildebrand-Schat: Manet - See , p. 116. This title and the terms Le Christ à la Pioche and Tête de Christ can be found in the catalog raisonné by Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet, Catalog raisonné , Vol. 1, p. 38, No. 14.
  2. ↑ Year see Hubertus Gaßner, Viola Hildebrand-Schat: Manet - See , p. 116.
  3. ↑ Size information see Hubertus Gaßner, Viola Hildebrand-Schat: Manet - See , p. 116.
  4. ↑ Adolphe Tabarant suspects an indicated landscape in the background. See Adolphe Tabarant: Manet et ses œuvres , p. 24.
  5. ↑ Referred to as Christ with a stick in Hans Körner: Edouard Manet: Dandy, Flaneur, Maler , p. 226. In addition, the term Christ with the staff can be found in Sandra Orienti: Edouard Manet , vol. I, p. 14.
  6. ↑ a b Beth Archer Brombert: Edouard Manet, rebel in a frock coat, p. 96.
  7. ↑ See Etude pour Le Christ Jardinier in Ronald Pickvance: Manet , p. 174.
  8. ↑ Hubertus Gaßner, Viola Hildebrand-Schat: Manet - See , p. 114.
  9. ↑ On Manet's various images of Christ, see Nancy Locke: Manet and the family romance , p. 134.
  10. ^ Henri Perruchot: Manet. A biography, p. 81.
  11. ^ Ronald Pickvance: Manet , p. 191.
  12. ↑ Manet submits The dead Christ, mourned by angels, for the Salon of 1864, The Mocking of Christ followed in 1865. See Matthias Krüger: Manet's Salon Pairs in the Hamburg Exhibition in Hubertus Gaßner , Viola Hildebrand-Schat: Manet - See , p. 35 -43.
  13. ↑ Hubertus Gaßner, Viola Hildebrand-Schat (Ed.): Manet - See , p. 116.
  14. ↑ Information on the auction of the picture in Swantje Karich: Modern Art, Defiant Angel of the North , article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 24, 2007 .
  15. ↑ a b c d Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet. Catalog raisonné . Vol. I, p. 38 No. 14.
  16. ↑ See the photograph in the online database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
  17. ↑ a b Entry in the archive of the Heinemann Gallery
  18. ^ Adolphe Tabarant: Manet et ses œuvres , p. 24.
  19. ↑ In the catalog, the sketch 39 × 32 is noted as No. 59, the oval version with 69 × 50 cm as No. 60. See Théodore Duret: Histoire d'Édouard Manet et de son oeuvre , p. 243.
  20. ↑ Sandra Orienti: Edouard Manet , German edition, vol. 1, p. 14.