The lilac bouquet
Édouard Manet , around 1882
54 × 42 cm
oil on canvas
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie
The lilac bouquet ( French Lilas blanc dans un vase de verre ) is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet . The picture from around 1882 is painted in oil on canvas and has the dimensions 54 cm × 42 cm. It shows a bouquet of white lilacs in a vase on a table top against a dark background. The picture is part of a series of flower still lifes that the artist created in the last months of his life, which were marked by illness and which can be read as a vanitas symbol. The painting belongs to the collection of the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin .
Image description
The painting shows a still life of flowers. On a table top is a glass vase with a few twigs of white lilac against a dark background, moved slightly to the right from the center of the picture. The transparent vessel has a hexagonal base and decorative white dots on the side glass surfaces. There are several branches of lilac in the vase, which is half filled with water. With his skilful brushwork, Manet shows the break in shape of the stems standing in the vase - single in the upper area through the wall of the glass, double in the lower area filled with water. The branches with the scattered green leaves and their rich, white flowers protrude over the upper edge of the vase on all sides, sometimes up to the edge of the picture. However, pure white can only be found in a few places - the flowers are usually gray, yellow, blue or green in color. While the painter chose a dabbing application of paint for the small flowers, the leaves are depicted with clearly visible, broad, elongated brushstrokes. The vase is placed on a light tabletop, which, shown at an angle in the picture and cut from the edges, rises diagonally from the lower left corner to the right. In the table top a marbling is indicated by individual horizontal darker brushstrokes. The edge of the table, which is blurred towards the background, is striking, underlining Manet's overall fleeting style of painting. The almost monochrome background is kept in an almost black-looking dark brown. The bouquet appears in the full light that falls on the object from the front left, so that the vase on the table top casts a short shadow to the right. The picture is signed, but not dated, “Manet” on the lower right of the table.
Various authors have tried to describe Manet's lilac bouquet in a witty way. The earliest texts published on this picture include the comments made by the art historian Julius Meier-Graefe in 1907. He praises the painting in the enthusiastic style of the time: “Manet's lilac is, if you can say so, far more lilac than the natural flower. "The then director of the Berlin Nationalgalerie Hugo von Tschudi expressed himself similarly :" The taste of the arrangement, the coloristic power, this suggestive technique, which gives the appearance with the least effort, is the most mature Manet. "Decades later, in 1967, he formulated Art historian Peter Krieger: “On a motif that was sparse in color and shape, Manet's pure painting increased into the sphere of the unique” and continues, “The small work of the highest spirituality has the summarily abbreviated, infallible mature mastery in every stroke. A lonely high point of still life painting in the 19th century. "Twenty years later, the museum guide from 1987 contains the short description:" The lilac bouquet, not a multicolored arrangement, but a summarily abbreviated apotheosis of blooming against a dark background, limited to the smallest nuances of white. "
Manet's last floral still life
The first floral still lifes can be found in Manet's oeuvre as early as the 1860s. After that he only picked up such motifs again occasionally. It was only towards the end of his life that he increasingly turned to this subject and created around twenty flower still lifes around 1882, although it is not possible to date these late works precisely. From around 1878 Manet suffered from the consequences of a syphilis disease , which caused paralysis in his left leg in particular, making it increasingly difficult for him to walk. To improve his health, from 1879 onwards he spent the summer months on cure in various Parisian suburbs, most recently in Rueil in 1882 . Most of the last floral still lifes may have been created during the summer stay in Rueil. It is said that he not only painted the flowers in the garden, but also had his friend Méry Laurent send him bouquets of flowers that Manet used as a template for his pictures. Manet was able to work on the small-format flower pictures while sitting, which was a considerable relief for him due to his illness.
Manet usually placed his floral still lifes on the marble top of a bistro table. Such a bistro table was in Manet's studio and, in addition to the floral still lifes, it also appears in other paintings, for example in the bar in the Folies-Bergère from 1881. Seven different glass vases are known as vessels for the flower still lifes, some of which are decorated with Japanese motifs. The flowers include tulips, peonies, roses, clematis and, again and again, lilacs. Sometimes the flowers are arranged in mixed bouquets, sometimes there is only one variety in the vase. A motif limited to white lilacs can be found next to the Berlin picture in another version with the title White Lilac in a Crystal Vase ( Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art , Kansas City (Missouri)). For this picture, Manet chose a vase with a square bottom, while the structure and execution of the picture show little difference to the Berlin version. What is striking in both images is the clear contrast between the white flowers and the dark background. This chiaroscuro effect is reminiscent of 17th century Dutch painting to which Manet repeatedly referred in his works. He was married to a Dutch woman himself and had visited the Netherlands several times, visited various museums there and, besides Rembrandt , admired Frans Hals above all . There are also strong light-dark contrasts in the works of both artists.
It is not known whether Manet wanted to make a symbolic statement with his flower still lifes. He certainly knew the meaning of objects depicted in still lifes as symbols of vanity. Flowers, which lose their splendor after a short flowering, were certainly known to Manet as a sign of transience in the face of their own serious illness. Any further interpretations must remain speculative. The white of the lilac can be seen as the color of innocence, but whether such an intention existed with Manet or whether he was simply attracted by the contrast between white and black remains unanswered. In other floral still lifes by Manet, a religious component is also occasionally seen. For example, in the painting Vase of White Lilacs and Roses ( Dallas Museum of Art ), the artist could have indicated the Trinity with the three roses . But there are no reliable indications for this either, and Manet's particular religiosity has not been passed down. For the art historian Ina Conzen, Manet's last floral still lifes are “a painting that shows the impressionistic, light style of the late period, but seems to be seized by an eternal inner glow that is independent of accidental external light moments.”
Édouard Manet:
White Lilac in a Crystal Vase , 1882
Édouard Manet:
Vase with white lilacs and roses , 1883
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Provenance
The Berlin collector couple Carl and Felicie Bernstein bought the painting shortly after it was created in 1882 during a stay in Paris. The sale presumably came about through the mediation of Carl Bernstein's cousin Charles Ephrussi , who was one of Manet's friends and who owned some of his paintings himself. The Bernsteins were the first collectors in Germany to acquire Impressionist paintings and show them to art lovers in their salon. They contributed significantly to the spread of this painting. In addition to the painting The Lilac Bouquet , they also owned Manet's Still Life Peonies and a crystal vase with roses, tulips and lilacs . The last two pictures were later transferred to Max Liebermann's collection , while The Fliederstrauß was bequeathed to the Nationalgalerie's collection after the death of Felicie Bernstein in 1908.
The painting initially hung in the main building of the National Gallery on Museum Island before it was exhibited in the New Department of the National Gallery in Berlin in the Kronprinzenpalais in 1919 . After the Nationalgalerie's holdings were relocated during World War II, The Fliederstrauss was one of the works that came to the western part of Berlin after the war. There the picture was first shown in the orangery of Charlottenburg Palace and from 1968 in the Neue Nationalgalerie in the Kulturforum . After German reunification and the merging of the separate museum holdings in East and West, the painting was returned to the building of the Alte Nationalgalerie.
literature
- Ingeborg Becker: French painting from Watteau to Renoir . Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig 1983, ISBN 3-922279-03-1 .
- Ulrike Bleicker: Museums in Berlin . Prestel, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-7913-0786-X .
- Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists . Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2002, ISBN 3-7757-1201-1
- Robert Gordon, Andrew Forge: The last flowers of Manet . Abrams, New York 1986, ISBN 0-8109-1422-0 .
- Peter Krieger: painter of impressionism . National Gallery, State Museums Berlin, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Berlin 1967.
- George L. Mauner: Manet, the still-life paintings . Abrams, New York 2000, ISBN 0-8109-4391-3 .
- Julius Meier-Graefe : Impressionists: Guys, Manet, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Cézanne . Piper, Munich 1907.
- Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné . Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris and Lausanne 1975.
- Hugo von Tschudi : The Bernstein Collection in Collected Writings on Modern Art , Bruckmann, Munich 1912.
- Angelika Wesenberg (Ed.): National Gallery Berlin, the XIX. Century, catalog of the works exhibited . Seemann, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-363-00765-5 .
Web link
Individual evidence
- ↑ Title of the picture Der Fliederstrauß after Angelika Wesenberg: Nationalgalerie Berlin, the XIX. Century , p. 248.
- ^ Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , Vol. IS. 306
- ↑ Julius Meier-Graefe: Impressionists: Guys, Manet, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Cézanne , p. 110.
- ^ Hugo von Tschudi: Die Sammlung Bernstein , p. 232.
- ↑ Peter Krieger: Painter of Impressionism , p. 18.
- ↑ Peter Krieger: Painter of Impressionism , p. 19.
- ↑ Ulrike Bleicker: Museums in Berlin , p. 271.
- ↑ Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists , p. 156.