The lemon
Édouard Manet , around 1880
14 × 22 cm
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay , Paris
The lemon , also lemon ( French Le citron ), is a still life by Édouard Manet, painted in oil on canvas around 1880 . It has a height of 14 cm and a width of 22 cm. You can see a single lemon lying on a dark plate. The lemon belongs to Manet's later work, in which he created a series of still lifes in the painting style of Impressionism , repeatedly choosing individual objects as motifs. The picture has no direct model, but is in the tradition of Dutch and Spanish Baroque painting . The lemon is in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris .
Image description
The small-format painting shows a lemon lying on a plate up close. Manet depicted the fruit from the side at about its natural size. The tips of the lying lemon point to the side edges. They are not completely horizontal at the same height - an imaginary connecting line between the end points rises slightly from left to right. The color of the lemon varies in different shades of yellow. The art historian Françoise Cachin sees it as a “harmony of gray and yellow”, her colleague Hans Körner notes that “the pomp that it unfolds lies on the surface, lies in the nuances of lemon yellow”. The lemon lies on a plate that looks dark gray, metallic. The bulging rim of the plate shimmers silver; the yellow of the lemon is reflected on the smooth plate surface. Manet's colleague, Alfred Stevens, called it a “Japanese plate”, while the art historian Carol Armstrong described it as a pewter plate . It is trimmed from the edges of the painting, at the bottom the plate extends almost to the edge of the picture. The surface on which the plate is standing takes up about the lower two thirds of the picture. This area is light brown in the front area of the image, the color becomes darker towards the back. Individual dark brushstrokes near the lower edge of the picture could indicate a wood grain. A table top or a work surface made of wood is conceivable as an associated piece of furniture. In the upper part of the picture, a monochrome dark brown area provides the background. The spatial context remains undefined by the close-up view of the object. There is no evidence whatsoever as to whether the still life is set in a kitchen, a dining room or a restaurant. A light source outside the image illuminates the lemon from the front. The paint application is partly impasto, especially in the lemon area, individual brushstrokes are clearly visible. This loose-looking brushwork corresponds to the typical painting style of Impressionism. The painting is signed 'E. Manet ”signed. This signature was added by Manet's wife Suzanne after the painter's death.
Lemons at the Manet plant
Still lifes comprise around a fifth of Manet's complete works. He himself described still life painting as the “painter's touchstone”. In the 1860s he created a series of paintings whose motifs are reminiscent of 17th century Dutch painting and in which lemons are part of the arrangement. They usually refer to their use and consumption, i.e. the preparation, garnishing and eating of meals. In the painting Oysters ( National Gallery of Art , Washington DC) , for example, Manet shows a meal still life which , in addition to the seafood from which it is based, includes a lemon cut in half. In the still life with oysters and fish ( Art Institute of Chicago ) there is also an arrangement of different components that includes a closed lemon. In the Still Life with Salmon ( Shelburne Museum ), Manet painted a half-peeled lemon in a porcelain bowl next to a closed lemon, the peel of which curls decoratively on the tablecloth. Comparable pictorial compositions can be found above all in Haarlem baroque painting, for example in Willem Claesz. Heda . In his painting Still Life with a Roman and Clock ( Mauritshuis , The Hague) there are details such as the ringed lemon peel, which later appears repeatedly in Manet's work. In this still life, Heda presents the fruit on a plate similar to the one in Manet's painting The Lemon . While 17th century Dutch painting mostly illustrated the theme of transience, Manet is not aware of such an intention. Although his still lifes can also be read as vanitas motifs , it is also possible that he chose his motifs only for decorative reasons.
Édouard Manet:
Oysters
Édouard Manet:
Still life with oysters and fish
Édouard Manet:
Still Life with Salmon
Willem Claesz. Heda:
Still life with roman and clock
Still lifes with lemons are also part of a few portraits of people that Manet created in the 1860s. In the portrait of Zacharie Astruc ( Kunsthalle Bremen ) he draped a still life on a table next to the seated Zacharie Astruc . It consists of stacked books and a tray with a glass, knife and lemon. As with the Dutch models, the fruit is half peeled and the peel is decorative. Such a half-opened lemon with a ringing peel can also be found in the painting The Lady with the Parrot ( Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York). Here the fruit lies at the foot of a wooden parrot patio, without it being clear why the lemon has found its place here. Manet shows a closed lemon in the portrait of Théodore Duret ( Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris ). The lemon in this picture belongs to a still life that Manet placed on a stool next to the writer Théodore Duret . A carafe and a glass of water stand on a tray with a knife in between. Manet put the closed lemon on the water glass; the knife lying ready is suitable for opening the lemon at any time. Manet's depiction of Duret refers to Spanish influences. Both met in Madrid in 1865 and the lemon attached can be read as a symbol for Spain. For portraits there are models in portraits by the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya and for lemons there are various examples in Spanish still life painting of the Baroque era. For example, Francisco de Zurbarán shows several lemons on a silver plate in the painting Plate with Lemons, Basket with Oranges and Cup with Rose ( Norton Simon Museum , Pasadena). His still life appears much stricter than many of the luscious Dutch paintings of the 17th century and is similar in presentation to the later painting The Lemon by Manet.
Édouard Manet:
Portrait of Zacharie Astruc
Édouard Manet:
The lady with the parrot
Édouard Manet:
Portrait of Théodore Duret
Francisco de Zurbarán:
plate with lemons, basket with oranges and cup with rose
In the last years of his life, Manet painted a number of still lifes that differ significantly from his works of the 1860s. He no longer created large-format arrangements, but concentrated on a few or individual objects. The result was a series of still lifes with flowers, but also pictures with a single pear, a melon, an apple, an asparagus stick or the painting The Lemon . Art historian Carol Armstrong pointed out that the lemon in the painting lacks any context. The fruit is therefore clearly not intended for consumption, but only serves to observe how still lifes were created only for this purpose. For George Mauner , the simplicity of the depiction of the motif is a sign of Manet's sophistication.
Édouard Manet:
Roses in a champagne glass
Édouard Manet:
The melon
Édouard Manet:
Apple on a plate
Édouard Manet:
The asparagus
reception
Manet's painting The Lemon found no direct painterly reception among his contemporaries. Nevertheless, art historians like Ina Conzen assume that still lifes like Die Lemon impressed Manet's fellow artists “to a great extent”. The extent to which Vincent van Gogh was known to Manet's painting The Lemon , for example , cannot be proven. Van Gogh's painting Still Life with Lemons on a Plate ( Van Gogh Museum , Amsterdam) from 1887 shows lemons on a plain plate without any ornamentation, as with Manet, but his fruits are more arranged in their arrangement and the table edges shown in the picture create one spatial impression which Manet lacks. Paul Cézanne's statement that he could astonish Paris with an apple is, according to Conzen, “probably unthinkable without Manet”. In Cézanne's still life there is an occasional lemon, but it is always part of a more complex composition. For example, in the painting Still Life with Apples from around 1890 ( Hermitage , Saint Petersburg), he placed a single lemon on a table next to other fruits. The way of painting makes his fruits appear comparatively simple, but the composition of the picture is based on traditional still lifes. The painting Drei Zitronen (private collection) by Manet's painter colleague Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1918 is much more reduced . Here even the plate on which the lemons lie is only indicated by a few brushstrokes and, as with Manet, there is no reference to the spatial context . The composition of three fruits, however, results in a relationship between the fruits that is naturally absent in Manet's single lemon - the picture was meanwhile in the Louvre.
Vincent van Gogh:
Still Life with Lemons on a Plate , 1887,
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Paul Cézanne:
Still Life with Apples , around 1890,
Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
Three Lemons , 1918,
private collection
| Lemons on a pewter plate |
|---|
| Henri Matisse , 1926/1929 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 55.6 x 67.1 cm |
| Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Link to the picture |
The artists of the classical modern period also repeatedly devoted themselves to painting still life, and they liked the depiction of lemons. Thematically related to Manet's lemon is, for example, the picture Lemons on a pewter plate ( Art Institute of Chicago ) by Henri Matisse . Like Renoir, Matisse might have seen Manet's painting in the Louvre, but whether it inspired the artists to create her picture is not known. Even if the pewter plate in Matisse is reminiscent of that of Manet, his depiction of the tropical fruits differs from those of Manet. In his lemon motif from 1926/1929, Matisse shows the fruits garnished with green leaves on a much larger looking plate. The overall composition also includes a recognizable table as a surface and an ornate background. The spatial situation remains unclear with Matisse, but goes far beyond the simple depiction of Manet's lemon .
| The Lemon, after Edouard Manet (Pictures of Magazines 2) |
|---|
| Vik Muniz , 2011 |
| Digital print |
| 101.6 x 164.6 cm |
| Private collection
Link to the picture |
The Brazilian artist Vik Muniz made direct reference to Manet's painting The Lemon in 2011 . His digital print The Lemon, after Edouard Manet (Pictures of Magazines 2) not only adopts Manet's motif, but also gives a reference to the model in the title. The additional picture Pictures of Magazines (German: pictures from magazines ) indicates that the work is not a painted picture. Rather, Muniz created a collage from a large number of images or image snippets that he put together on the computer, which can give the viewer the impression of a painted picture.
Provenance
The painting The Lemon was in his possession until the painter's death. It is believed that his widow Suzanne Manet gave the picture to Antonin Proust , a friend of Manet. This would also explain the signature she added later in the painting. The work was put up for auction in March 1905 by the art dealer Félix Gérard at the auction house Hôtel Drouot , where it was bought by a collector named Leclercq. A short time later it came into the collection of the banker Isaac de Camondo , who bequeathed this picture to the French national museums (Musées nationaux) along with his extensive art collection, which included several important works by Manet. Since 1911 the picture has belonged to the Louvre collection , where it was first exhibited in 1914. After being shown in the Galerie du Jeu de Paume from 1947, it has been part of the museum's collection since the Musée d'Orsay opened in 1986.
literature
- Carol Armstrong: Manet Manette . Yale University Press, New Haven 2002, ISBN 0-300-09658-5 .
- Laurence Brogniez: Écrit (ure) s de peintres belges . PIE-Peter Lang, Brussels 2008, ISBN 978-90-5201-446-3 .
- Françoise Cachin , Charles S. Moffett , 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 )
- Françoise Cachin: Manet . DuMont, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-7701-2791-9 .
- Georges-Paul Collet: Jacques-Emile Blanche, biography . Bartillat, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-84100-385-X .
- Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists . Exhibition catalog Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2002, ISBN 3-7757-1201-1 .
- Gerhard Finckh (ed.): Edouard Manet . From the Heydt Museum, Wuppertal 2017, ISBN 978-3-89202-098-1 .
- Stéphane Guégan: Manet, inventeur du moderne . Musée d'Orsay. Gallimard, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-07-013323-9 .
- Gotthard Jedlicka: Edouard Manet . Rentsch, Erlenbach / Zurich 1941.
- Hans Körner: Edouard Manet: dandy, flaneur, painter . Fink, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7705-2931-6 .
- George Mauner: Manet: the still-life paintings . Exhibition catalog Musée d'Orsay, Paris and Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Abrams, New York 2000, ISBN 0-8109-4391-3 .
- Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné . Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris / Lausanne 1975, OCLC 1117119592 .
- Akiya Takahashi, Naoko Sugiyama: Manet et le Paris modern . Exhibition catalog Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum. NHK Puromoshon, Tokyo 2010, OCLC 775328531 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The title The lemon can be found in literature, for example in Gerhard Finckh: Edouard Manet. S. 188. The painting is referred to as lemon in Françoise Cachin, Charles S. Moffett and Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Manet: 1832–1883. P. 451 and in Françoise Cachin: Manet. P. 139.
- ↑ Le citron is given, for example, as a title in Stéphane Guégan: Manet, inventeur du moderne. P. 282.
- ^ The dating 1880 can be found in Françoise Cachin: Manet. S. 139 and Gerhard Finckh: Edouard Manet. S. 188. Deviating there is the chronological assignment 1880–1881, for example in Françoise Cachin, Charles S. Moffett and Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Manet: 1832–1883. P. 45 or Stéphane Guégan: Manet, inventeur du moderne. P. 282.
- ^ Françoise Cachin in Françoise Cachin, Charles S. Moffett and Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Manet: 1832-1883. S, 452.
- ^ Hans Körner: Edouard Manet: Dandy, flaneur, painter. P. 206.
- ↑ The original quotation from Stevens reads: "Tout peintre qui ne sait pas enlever un citron sur une assiette du japon n'est pas un coloriste délicat." See Laurence Brogniez: Écrit (ure) s de peintres belges. P. 64.
- ↑ Carol Armstrong: Manet Manette. P. 180.
- ^ Françoise Cachin in Françoise Cachin, Charles S. Moffett and Juliet Wilson-Bareau: Manet: 1832-1883. P. 452.
- ↑ George Mauner: Manet: the still-life paintings. P. 12.
- ↑ Manet said to Jacques-Émile Blanche : “La natur-morte est la pierre de touche du peintre”, see Georges-Paul Collet: Jacques-Emile Blanche, biography. P. 37.
- ↑ Carol Armstrong: Manet Manette. Pp. 280-281.
- ↑ Carol Armstrong: Manet Manette. Pp. 280-281.
- ↑ George Mauner: Manet: the still-life paintings. P. 96.
- ^ Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists. P. 147.
- ^ Conzen 147
- ↑ All information on the provenance can be found on the website of the Musée d'Orsay. In the literature there is the identical information, for example in Akiya Takahashi, Naoko Sugiyama: Manet et le Paris moderne. P. 208.