Spring (Manet)

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Spring
Édouard Manet , 1881
74 × 51.5 cm
oil on canvas
J. Paul Getty Museum , Los Angeles

Spring or Jeanne ( French Le Printemps or Jeanne ) is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet . The work, painted in oil on canvas in 1881, is 74 cm high and 51.5 cm wide. It shows the future actress Jeanne Demarsy in an elegant white dress with a floral decoration in front of a plant background. The picture is part of a planned series in which the four seasons should be represented by women. Of these, however, only the spring and autumn motifs were used. Manet showed Spring 1882 in the Salon de Paris , where it was positively received by critics. Various etchings were made after the picture and it was reproduced in color as early as 1882. The painting Spring belongs to the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles .

Image description

The painting shows a half-length portrait of a young woman in front of a floral background. The figure shows Jeanne Demarsy, about sixteen years old, who Manet portrayed in this picture in the figure of spring. The face facing the left edge of the picture has a light complexion, some areas of which are slightly pink. The contour from the forehead to the snub nose and the lush red lips to the chin is drawn with a fine line. Her brown eyes look straight ahead to the edge of the picture or, as the art historian Gotthard Jedlicka writes, “with a youthful, almost childlike thoughtfulness”. The long eyelashes and thick dark eyebrows are clearly visible. Her hair, which is also dark, peeks out in a slightly curled shape from under a capote ( capot hat ).

The front of the capote is richly decorated with white ruffles . Various flowers in mauve and yellow-white are attached to the brownish hat . Broad dark ribbons extend from the back of the capote down the neck and are tied in a bow under the chin. In addition to the hat, the tight-fitting white dress with floral decoration is part of Jeanne Demarsy's fashionable presentation. It is closed at the neck and has a cuirass waist (also violin waist ), as is typical of Parisian women's fashion around 1880. The half-length sleeve seen in the picture extends to over the elbow. While the fabric on the upper arm is also tight, it falls down in folds at the wide-cut sleeve end. The white dress is provided with a floral pattern, with individual blue and yellow flowers and green leaves in the upper area. Towards the lower edge of the picture, Manet has replaced this fine painting with an impressionistic brush painting. Here the details of the fabric pattern become blurred and are replaced by short, vertical brushstrokes.

The left forearm facing the viewer is in a long, beige-colored glove that reaches under the sleeve of the dress so that no skin can be seen here. On her wrist, Mademoiselle Demarsy wears a narrow gold bracelet with a small pearl or gemstone. The left hand grips the stick of a parasol, which she has placed over her shoulder like a soldier's rifle . The opened parasol (also called Parasol ) fills the upper right corner and is cut off from the right side edge. Like the gloves, it is covered with a beige fabric and has a lace border on the edge .

Behind Jeanne Demarsy is a lush shrub with numerous green leaves. Possibly this is rhododendron , which produces its flowers in spring. Such a flower can also be seen in the upper left corner, where the blue sky shines through behind the shrub. In the branches on the lower right edge of the picture, the view goes to a meadow behind the bush. A garden bench may have been sketched here. Two red spots of color placed on the right above the shoulder could be other flowers, but also the roof of a house. The picture is signed with "Manet 1881" in black on the lower left edge of the picture next to the dress in plant green.

For Gotthard Jedlicka, the “garden wilderness” seen in the background contrasts the “urban grace” of those portrayed. He sees “a fruit” in the young woman's face, which like “spring itself seems to be waiting to unfold”. The art historian Juliet Wilson-Bareau emphasizes that in the interplay of flowered dress, parasol, flowers on the hat, blue sky and foliage, “Jeanne's image immediately evokes the idea of ​​spring”.

Spring as part of a season cycle

The painting Spring is part of a cycle planned by Manet in which beautiful women were supposed to represent the four seasons. The idea for this came from Manet's school friend Antonin Proust , who later bought the picture Der Frühling . Representing the seasons personified by female figures has a long tradition and can already be found in Hellenistic and Roman art . Since the Renaissance , painters have turned to this theme again and again, choosing not only portraits of women but also landscapes to depict the four seasons. Manet's contemporary Camille Pissarro painted the four seasons as impressionist landscapes in 1872. But Manet had neither the intention of painting landscapes nor, in the narrower sense, of depicting the women he portrayed as allegories . For him, the focus was on the “typical Parisian woman” - attractive young women in fashionable clothes, as the strollers could observe on his walks in the streets of Paris or in the Jardin des Tuileries .

The first painting in Manet's planned series was the painting Spring . The portrait of a princess from the house of Este by Antonio Pisanello , which Manet certainly knew from his numerous visits to the Louvre, could have been the model for the composition of a female figure in half profile against a background of garden plants . For the woman in the white dress with a floral decoration, a reference to the figure of Flora in the painting Primavera by Sandro Botticelli is obvious. Manet had seen the picture in the Uffizi in Florence in 1853 while on a trip to Italy . Another inspiration for this painting of Manet were probably also the Japanese ukiyo-e - woodcuts , which he least since the Paris World Exhibition in 1867 knew. In the series with courtesan portraits created by Kitagawa Utamaro , for example, there is the depiction of the courtesan Hanaôgi from the Ogiya house , who, like Manet's Jeanne Demarsy in Spring in a flowered dress, is shown as a half- length figure.

  • Antonio Pisanello: Portrait of a Princess from the House of Este , around 1436–1438 Louvre, Paris

  • Sandro Botticelli: Primavera (detail: Flora on the left, Chloris in the middle, Zephyr on the right), around 1482–1487, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

  • Kitagawa Utamaro: Courtesan Hanaôgi from the Ogiya house , around 1806–1807, various locations

Manet did not paint Spring in the wild, as the flowering shrub in the background might suggest. Jacques-Émile Blanche reports that it was created in his studio in Paris' Rue d'Amsterdam. As a model, he chose the young, sixteen-year-old Jeanne Demarsy, who years later appeared as an actress on the Parisian theater stages. Manet's biographer Adolphe Tabarant described them as bien jolie, mignonne, pimpante, effrontée, un papillon de boulevard ("very pretty, lovely, neat, cheeky, a tabloid butterfly"). Other authors are more clear about the role of Jeanne Demarsy in Parisian society and refer to her as a "half-worldly" or count her to the "cream of the Paris courtesan scene". Manet has portrayed her several times, for example as a portrait of a young woman with a cape ( Musée des Beaux-Arts , Lyon). In the pastel Auf der Bank ( Pola Museum of Art , Hakone), her head appears as in Spring in profile against a floral background.

Choosing the right wardrobe was at least as important to Manet as choosing the model. He followed the views of the writer Charles Baudelaire , who saw the task of the modern painter in "capturing the poetic of contemporary clothing". Manet was fascinated by the current women's clothing and often accompanied his female acquaintances to the fashion houses of Paris. For the painting Spring he bought a flower-adorned hat from the well-known milliner Madame Virot, and from Madame Derot he selected the fabric for the dress. After Jeanne Demarsy's sessions in the studio, he asked her to lend him the dress so that he could work on the fabric in the painting while she was away. It is known from Jacques-Émile Blanche how hard Manet tried to capture the silky sheen of the fabric in the picture. Even the blue sky in the background caused difficulties for Manet, because he feared too much dominance of the color.

After completing the painting Spring , Manet turned to the subject of autumn in the order of the seasons. He asked his 32-year-old friend Méry Laurent to be a model for this, also in 1881 . Today she is known less for her stage career as an actress and more as a courtesan who lived on financial donations from wealthy men. Manet had already painted a number of other portraits of her. For the portrait entitled Autumn ( Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy ), Méry Laurent bought a fur-trimmed jacket from Charles Frederick Worth's fashion house . As in the painting Spring Spring , Méry Laurent's background is adorned with flowers in autumn . Instead of a garden scene, however, she stands in front of a Japanese robe used as a wall hanging. The art historian Manuela B. Mena Marqués has pointed out the close connection between women and flowers in Manet's work. Already in his paintings from the 1860s there are depictions of women with flowers added as decoration. For example, the reclining female nude in the picture Olympia is adorned with a flower in her hair and in The Balcony there is next to a woman with a hat adorned with flowers a flowering potted plant, which is placed next to the seated female main figure. For Manet - according to Mena Marqués - flowers are a natural complement to women. Both are characterized by their fleeting, delicate and sensual beauty and even their scent is similar in an era of heavy perfumes. Art historian Maryanne Stevens also sees a clear relationship between women and flowers in Manet's works. In Der Frühling - according to Stevens - Jeanne Demarsy herself appears like a blossom that seems to grow out of the green foliage in the background. Journalist Maurice de Seigneur was just as enthusiastic when the painting was presented in the Salon de Paris . He compared Jeanne Demarsy to a living flower. She is not a woman, but a bouquet .

In the Salon of 1882, Manet exhibited the large-format painting Bar in the Folies-Bergère ( Courtauld Institute of Art , London) alongside the painting The Spring . Both works met with a positive response from the critics. For Manet this was not a matter of course, because his pictures had often been rejected in previous years. He did not exhibit the autumn publicly during his lifetime, and yet the Méry Laurent portrayed in it could be seen in the Salon of 1882. Like Jeanne Demarsy, she can be seen in the crowd in the background of the picture Bar in the Folies-Bergère . After spring and autumn , Manet no longer completed the sequence of seasons. In the last few months before his death in 1883 he was too sick to complete this series of pictures. The art historian Anne Coffin Hanson has suggested that Manet intended the painting Amazone, blue ground ( Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza , Madrid) as a summer motif. Manet could no longer complete the painting for which Henriette Chabot was the model. However, a statement by Manet's godchild, Léon Leenhoff, speaks against this thesis . Accordingly, Manet had also planned Jeanne Demarsy as a model for the summer and Méry Laurent for the winter.

  • Édouard Manet:
    On the bench , 1881

  • Édouard Manet:
    Autumn , 1882

  • Édouard Manet:
    Bar in the Folies-Bergère (detail), 1881

  • Édouard Manet:
    Amazon, blue ground , 1882,

Manet's reproductions of The Spring

The paintings Bar in the Folies Bergère and The Spring , exhibited by Manet at the Salon de Paris in 1882, were both instant hit with audiences. On April 29, 1882, the critic Gustave Goetschy asked Manet for a reproduction that was to illustrate an article with a salon review in the newspaper Le Soir the following day . Manet replied to Goetschy that he could not make a drawing of the bar that excluded the semitones. But he would take the picture of Jeanne . However, such a reproduction did not actually appear until June 1, 1882 in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts . Manet had a reversed black-and-white photograph of the painting made. He then traced the translucent outlines in pencil on the back of the photo, which was printed on albumen paper . The further execution of the drawing was done with ink . The original photograph with the drawing on the back is now in the collection of the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The etching made after this drawing without halftones is only known as a reproduction in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Manet seems to have been dissatisfied with the result and had Henri Guérard engrave a second etching, which, however, did not satisfy him either. This etching was not reproduced until after Manet's death in 1890, 1894, 1902 and 1905. There are numerous prints from this etching in public and private collections. The original copper plate is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.

In addition, Manet had Charles Cros produce a color lithograph . The color reproduction of the three-color photography appeared in a brochure published by Ernest Hoschedé entitled Impressions de mon voyage au Salon de 1882 . The color photographic print made after taking a picture of the oil painting reproduces the image reversed. It was the first color photogravure printed using the process developed by Charles Cros. The reproduction made by the printer Tolmer seems to have at least satisfied Charles Cros. In a letter to Manet, he wrote: “The company has exceeded all expectations. I am very happy to have done my final work based on one of your works. "

  • Édouard Manet:
    Spring , photograph from 1882, reversed

  • Édouard Manet:
    Spring , pencil and ink drawing on the back of the photograph

  • Édouard Manet:
    Spring , etching without halftones

  • Édouard Manet:
    Spring , second etching

  • Édouard Manet:
    Spring , reversed color lithograph

Provenance

Manet sold the picture to his friend Antonin Proust on January 2, 1883 for 3,000 francs . It was bought from him in 1902 by the opera singer Jean-Baptiste Faure , who owned one of the most extensive collections of Manet's paintings, including many of his major works. Faure sold the painting on March 13, 1907 to the Parisian art dealer Durand-Ruel . This kept the painting in their holdings for two years before they sold it in their New York branch on November 24, 1909 to the collector Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne (1839-1917). The picture stayed in the Payne family for more than 100 years. After the death of the childless Oliver Hazard Payne, his nephew Harry Payne Bingham (1887–1955) inherited the picture. His descendants made the painting available on permanent loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC from 1993 to 2014 . On November 5, 2014, the picture was put up for auction in the New York branch of Christie's auction house. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles acquired the painting for $ 65,125,000 . It is the highest price ever paid for a Manet work at auction.

literature

  • Françoise Cachin , Charles S. Moffett and Juliet Wilson-Bareau : Manet: 1832–1883 . Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, German edition: Frölich and Kaufmann, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-88725-092-3 (in it on Spring especially pp. 486–488).
  • Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists . Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2002, ISBN 3-7757-1201-1 (in it on Spring especially p. 133, 241).
  • George Heard Hamilton: Manet and his critics . Yale University Press, New Haven 1986, ISBN 0-300-03759-7 (In Spring, especially p. 249).
  • Anne Coffin Hanson : Manet and the modern tradition . Yale University Press, New Haven 1977, ISBN 0-300-01954-8 (Therein for Spring especially p. 86).
  • Gotthard Jedlicka : Manet . Rentsch, Erlenbach 1941 (in it on Spring especially pp. 385–386).
  • Hans Körner: Edouard Manet, dandy, flaneur, painter . Fink, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7705-2931-6 (in it on Der Frühling especially pp. 208, 211).
  • Manuela B. Mena Marqués: Manet en el Prado . Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid 2003, ISBN 84-8480-053-9 (In it on Spring especially pp. 338-340, 490).
  • Antonin Proust : Édouard Manet, souvenirs . Librairie Renouard, Paris 1913 (in it on Spring, especially pp. 112–113).
  • Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné . Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris and Lausanne 1975 (in it on Spring especially, Vol. I, pp. 23, 276–277).
  • Maryanne Stevens: Manet, portraying life . Royal Academy of Arts, London 2012, ISBN 978-1-905711-74-1 (Therein for Spring especially pp. 52–53, 56, 200).
  • Adolphe Tabarant : Manet et ses œuvres . Gallimard, Paris 1947 (in it on Spring especially p. 414, 432–433).
  • Juliet Wilson-Bareau : Edouard Manet, the graphic work . Stadtverwaltung Ingelheim, Ingelheim am Rhein 1977 (in it on Spring especially p. 17, 136).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Gotthard Jedlicka: Manet , p. 375
  2. ↑ The comparison with a soldier's rifle comes from Louis de Fourcaud, who wrote an article about the Salon de Paris that appeared in the magazine Le Gaulois on May 4, 1882 . See Adolphe Tabarant: Manet et ses œuvres , p. 440.
  3. ^ A b Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Jeanne - The Spring in Réunion des Musées Nationaux Paris and Metropolitan Museum of Art New York: Manet , p. 486.
  4. ↑ Jacques-Émile Blanche visited Manet while he was working on the painting The Spring . See Gotthard Jedlicka: Manet , p. 374.
  5. ^ Adolphe Tabarant: Manet et ses œuvres , p. 414.
  6. ↑ Gotthard Jedlicka: Manet , p. 374
  7. ↑ Hans Körner: Edouard Manet , p. 211.
  8. ↑ quoted from Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists , p. 119.
  9. ^ Maryanne Stevens: Manet, portraying life , p. 200.
  10. ^ Antonin Proust: Édouard Manet, Souvenirs , pp. 112–113.
  11. ^ A b c Françoise Cachin: Autumn in Réunion des Musées Nationaux Paris and Metropolitan Museum of Art New York: Manet , p. 489.
  12. ↑ Manuela B. Mena Marqués: Manet en el Prado p. 490.
  13. ^ Maryanne Stevens: Manet, portraying , life, p. 52.
  14. ^ Maurice du Seigneur: L'art et les artistes au salon de 1882 , published in L'Artiste, July 1882, p. 21, quoted in George Heard Hamilton: Manet and his critics , p. 249.
  15. ↑ Méry Laurent is the woman in the white dress, Jeanne Demarsy is sitting above on the right. See Françoise Cachin: Autumn in Réunion des Musées Nationaux Paris and Metropolitan Museum of Art New York: Manet , p. 478.
  16. ^ Anne Coffin Hanson: Manet and the modern tradition , p. 86.
  17. ^ Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists , p. 136.
  18. ^ Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Jeanne - The Spring in Réunion des Musées Nationaux Paris and Metropolitan Museum of Art New York: Manet, p. 487.
  19. ^ A b Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Jeanne - The Spring in Réunion des Musées Nationaux Paris and Metropolitan Museum of Art New York: Manet , p. 488.
  20. ↑ Juliet Wilson: Edouard Manet, the graphic work , p. 136.
  21. ^ Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Jeanne - The Spring in Réunion des Musées Nationaux Paris and Metropolitan Museum of Art New York: Manet, p. 39.
  22. ^ Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , Vol. 1, p. 23.
  23. ↑ Craig Nakano: Getty breaks record with $ 65.1-million purchase of Manet's 'Spring' , Los Angeles Times article, Nov. 5, 2014
  24. ↑ Information about the auction at www.christies.com
This article was added to the list of excellent articles in this version on November 2, 2017 .