Women in the race

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Women in the Race
Édouard Manet , 1864–1865
42.2 × 32.1 cm
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum , Cincinnati

Women at races , also races in Auteuil or races in Longchamp ( French Champ de Courses ), is a painting by Édouard Manet . It is painted in oil on canvas and has a height of 42.2 cm and a width of 32.1 cm. The work, painted between 1864 and 1865, shows two women visiting the Longchamp racecourse in the Auteuil district of Paris . Originally the motif was part of a larger composition that Manet himself cut up. The picture belongs to the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum .

Image description

The painting shows a scene at the Longchamp racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne on the outskirts of Paris. The central figures are two women standing slightly diagonally offset, who watch what is happening on the racing course behind a barrier. The view of the two women is separated by a wooden stick hammered into the ground. With ropes stretched horizontally on it, it forms the boundary to the green of the racetrack in the foreground. The view of the two women falls from a slightly elevated position and could be directed at the women from a rider on a horse or from people from a carriage. Details of other carriages can be found in the background: On the left-hand side a large wheel with yellow spokes can be seen in the cut-out, in the upper right corner there is another wheel with reddish spokes.

The women wear strikingly sweeping clothes, a fashion that refers to the 1860s when the picture was created. The woman on the left is wearing a blue-gray dress with a matching jacket over it. She wears a hood on her head , the black ribbon of which is tied in a bow under her chin. In her gloved right hand she is holding a small dark green parasol. The second woman standing behind her on the right-hand side, slightly offset, is wearing a light brown dress with white collar and sleeves. Her headgear is significantly lighter and has a bright blue ribbon with a large bow that highlights the chin area. She also carries a parasol in her gloved right hand. She placed her bare left hand on the cord in front of her with her fingers slightly splayed. She is holding a flower in her hand - possibly a rose. However, it remains unclear whether the woman received the flower as a present or whether she would like to use the flower to honor a successful race winner.

On the right, a little boy pushes his way into the picture and supports his right arm on a cordon. Since he is largely cut off from the edge of the picture, only part of his black cap and gray jacket can be seen. What is striking is the absence of the actual racing action in the picture. The art historian Tobias G. Natter , on the other hand, sees an interest in Manet's choice of motif “for the atmosphere around the competition” and “the world of the Belle Époque”.

Overall, the picture is rather sketchy with loose brushwork. The application of paint is sometimes very thin or missing, which means that the textile structure of the canvas has remained visible in some areas. Nevertheless, Manet seems to have considered the picture to be a completed work, as indicated by his signature “Manet” and the date “1865” in the lower right corner of the picture.

The painting as a fragment of a larger composition

The painting Women at the Race was originally part of a much larger composition, the exact appearance and dimensions of which are no longer known. Manet exhibited this painting, known as the Race in Longchamp , in the Parisian Galerie Martinet in February 1865 and later cut it up into several parts. Some of these fragments are also called the Race in Longchamp . Several art historians have tried to reconstruct the original painting in their deliberations. The relevant investigations to this day come from Jean C. Harris , who wrote an article on this topic in 1966.

It is known that Manet was one of the visitors to the Longchamp racecourse. This is evidenced by the pencil sketch made by his painter colleague Edgar Degas on site, Édouard Manet during the race ( Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York). Manet was also on the racetrack with a sketchbook and made a number of studies on site. This includes, for example, the drawing from the back of a woman with an open umbrella and a man with a cylinder ( Louvre , Paris). Drawings like this, however, were not direct preliminary studies for the later oil paintings with racetrack motifs. In contrast, a watercolor in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge (Massachusetts), which is also entitled Race in Longchamp , serves as preliminary work . The watercolor was created on two sheets of paper joined together and is held in a strongly stretched landscape format. From left to right, visitors on horseback and in carriages can be seen in the inner oval of the racetrack, spectators standing at the barrier, the actual racetrack with racehorses approaching the viewer and the roof of the grandstand cut off from the right edge. In the middle of this watercolor, in the foreground of the barricade, is the woman in the gray dress, who stands on the left in the painting Women running . The space occupied by the woman in the brown dress standing next to her in the painting is occupied by a man with a cylinder at her side in the preparatory watercolor.

Since Manet was dissatisfied with the large-format painting Race in Longchamp , he cut it up into several parts after the exhibition in the Galerie Martinet. Only two fragments of this have been preserved. In addition to women at the race , there is the painting Horse Racecourse in Longchamp (private collection), which shows equally fashionably dressed female visitors behind the barrier of the racecourse. Although both pictures are only fragments of a larger composition, they were signed by Manet and thus marked as a completed work. For the art historian Aaron Betsky, these fragments represent the actual subject of the entire picture composition - “the fashionable society of modern life”.

  • Edgar Degas:
    Édouard Manet running ,
    around 1865

  • Édouard Manet:
    Back view of a woman with an open umbrella and a man with a top hat ,
    1864

  • Édouard Manet:
    Race in Longchamp ,
    1864

  • Édouard Manet:
    Racecourse in Longchamp ,
    1864

Horse racing as a modern leisure activity

Modern horse racing , such as steeplechase , came to Paris in the 19th century through British people living in France. It was only a few years before Manet's painting Women at the Race that the racecourse in Longchamp opened in 1857 . In 1863 the horse racing association Société des Steeplechases de France was founded ; The first equestrian magazines were Le Jockey in 1864 and Le champ des courses in 1866 . Within this short period of time, horse racing developed into a fashionable social event in Paris and Manet was one of the first painters to depict the events there in his pictures. The wealthy upper class of bankers, politicians, diplomats and entrepreneurs met at the horse race. The visitors were able to take a seat in the stands, but there was also the possibility of being brought into the inner oval of the racetrack relatively exclusively with the equipage . Manet's friend Edgar Degas painted such visitors in a carriage in 1869 in The Carriage at the Race ( Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ). Around twenty years after Manet's women in the race , the painter Jean Béraud created another view of the racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne with horse racing in Longchamp ( Musée Carnavalet , Paris). His portrayal of the subject, however, is less spontaneous, but worked out in a fine painting committed to realism. In the left half of the picture there are spectators behind a barrier, similar to the one Manet had painted. At Béraud, the cordon is a massive barrier, which indicates the establishment of the racetrack. The audience also differ in the images of Manet and Béraud. While the women at Manet are still hesitant to watch what is going on on the racetrack, the audience at Béraud is enthusiastic about the horse racing and cheers on the jockeys and their horses.

  • Edgar Degas:
    The carriage at the race
    1869

  • Jean Béraud:
    Horse racing in Longchamp
    1886

Provenance

After Manet, the first known owner of the painting was the art collector Paul Gallimard . He sold the painting in 1902 to the Parisian art dealer Bernheim-Jeune , which later passed it on to the Berlin art dealer Cassirer . There the painter Max Liebermann acquired the painting on June 27, 1904. Liebermann was the owner of the picture until his death in 1935. After the NSDAP came to power in 1933, he sent part of his art collection - including Manet's women at the race - to the Kunsthaus Zürich for safekeeping . Liebermann's daughter Käthe and her husband Kurt Riezler were able to take over this part of the collection in 1938 after they emigrated from Germany and took them to the United States. The Riezler couple loaned the painting Women in the Race from June 1941 to October 1942 to the Art Institute of Chicago . They then gave the picture to the New York art trade, where it was offered by Galerie Rosenberg & Stiebel and the French Art Galleries run by Morris Gutmann . In 1944, the Cincinnati Art Museum acquired the painting from the Fanny Bryce Lehmer Endowment Fund .

literature

  • Aaron Betsky: Cincinnati Art Museum Collection Highlights . Giles, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-904832-53-9 .
  • J. Carter Brown: French Impressionists and Their Companions . Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Neue Pinakothek, Munich 1990.
  • Françoise Cachin : Manet . DuMont, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-7701-2791-9 .
  • Anne Coffin Hanson : Edouard Manet. 1832-1883 . Exhibition catalog, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 1966.
  • Tobias G. Natter : Max Liebermann and the French Impressionists . DuMont, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7701-4294-2 .
  • Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné . Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris and Lausanne 1975.
  • Theodore Reff : Manet and modern Paris . National Gallery of Art, Washington and University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1982, ISBN 0-226-70720-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Christian Lenz: Women at the race in J. Carter Brown: French Impressionists and their companions , p. 84.
  2. ↑ The painting is referred to as the race in Autueil in Tobias G. Natter: Max Liebermann and the French Impressionists , p. 210.
  3. ^ Françoise Cachin: Manet , p. 150.
  4. ^ French title based on Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , p. 98.
  5. ↑ The sizes refer to the information provided by the Cincinnati Art Museum, see its website. In the catalog raisonné by Rouart / Wildenstein, 41 × 31 cm is given as the image size, see Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , vol. I, p. 98.
  6. ^ Anne Coffin Hanson: Edouard Manet. 1832-1883 , p. 87.
  7. ↑ a b c Tobias G. Natter: Max Liebermann and the French Impressionists p. 210.
  8. ↑ a b c d Aaron Betsky: Cincinnati Art Museum Collection Highlights , p. 213.
  9. ↑ Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , Vol. I, p. 98.
  10. ↑ Jean C. Harris: Manet's Racetrack Paintings in The Art Bulletin , pp. 79-80, March 1966 cited in Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , p. 98.
  11. ↑ a b c Theodore Reff: Manet and modern Paris , p. 132.
  12. ↑ Original quote: "the fashionable sociability of modern life" in Aaron Betsky: Cincinnati Art Museum Collection Highlights , p. 213.
  13. ↑ a b c Françoise Cachin: Manet , p. 70.
  14. ↑ In some older publications there is a reference to Gustave Caillebotte as the buyer of the picture on Manet's estate campaign in 1884. In fact, however, Caillebotte acquired another Manet picture there with the title Les courses . See Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , Volume I, p. 98, catalog number 96.
  15. ↑ Tobias G. Natter: Max Liebermann and the French Impressionists , p. 249.
  16. ↑ Information on loaning the picture from the Riezlers to the Art Institute of Chicago on the Cincinnati Art Museum website.
  17. ↑ Information on the provenance in Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , p. 98 and in detail on the website of the Cincinnati Art Museum.