Jeune homme à barbe blonde
Jeune homme à barbe blonde is a pastel portrait on canvas by the French painter Édouard Manet , created around 1881 . It shows the head of an unknown young man with a blond beard. The 56 × 46 cm picture is one of the few male portraits that Manet created in the last years of his life. Today it is in a private collection.
Image description
The picture shows the head of a young man in bust format , which he has sketched with just a few lines of chalk. The head turned to the left of the picture reveals the face in half profile. His eyes do not look at the viewer, but fix a point on the left outside the canvas. The opened lips, which underline the lively character of the person portrayed, can create the impression that he is being represented in a conversation. His brown beard with the ends twisted to the tips is striking. While the left half of the sitter's face lies in the shadow area and is kept very dark, his right half and forehead have a rather pale complexion. The main hair is combed into a parted short hairstyle over the free forehead. The broad eyebrows above the dark eyes are particularly striking.
Little can be seen of the clothing. Manet wore a white shirt with a blue tie and over it a blue-gray suit just around the neck. At the bottom of the picture, additional chalk lines could possibly sketch the young man's hands. Several broad lines to the left and right of the head as well as individual points above the person portrayed indicate a background without a spatial situation being suspected. The primed canvas has remained empty in large areas of the picture. The picture is neither signed nor dated.
The portrait of a stranger
The identity of the young man depicted is not known. Manet has usually not accepted any commissioned work, and in particular his pastel portraits of men in recent years mostly show portraits of friends and acquaintances. This series includes portraits of Louis Gauthier – Lathuille, the son of a restaurant owner friend, of the writers René Maizeroy and George Moore , of the composers Ernest Cabaner (Jean de Cabanès) and Emmanuel Chabrier , of Manet's doctor Dr. Materne and by the painters Alphonse Maureau , Constantin Guys and Julien de La Rochenoire .
The art historian Sandra Orienti suggested that the sitter in the picture Jeune homme à barbe blonde could possibly be Manet's doctor Dr. Be materne. The comparison with the portrait of Dr. However, Materne ( Musée d'Orsay ) shows a lack of resemblance between the portraits, particularly in the type of beard. There are similarities in subject and execution in another pastel portrait of an unknown young man from Manet's hand. The picture Blonder Mann ( Fogg Art Museum ) clearly shows a different man than the pastel Jeune homme à barbe blonde , as can be recognized by the much lighter hair. The portrait of Jean de Cabanès (Musée d'Orsay) also belongs to this series of male portraits in Manet's late work . His facial features, but above all beard and eyebrows, show similarities with what is depicted in Jeune homme à barbe blonde , but do not give any indication of his identity, but can also be coincidental similarities. How much Manet enjoyed depicting the wild growth of beards of his contemporaries in his pictures and also underlining the character of his friends is shown by two further portraits of the painter. In the portrait of George Moore ( Metropolitan Museum of Art ), the Irish poet is also shown as a young man. Overall, however, it is much more detailed than the picture Jeune homme à barbe blonde . Manet was not only attracted to young men, but also to the expressive face of an older man. This is evidenced by the portrait of Constantin Guys (private collection), in which the painter colleague can be seen with a white beard.
Édouard Manet:
Doctor Materne , around 1880
Édouard Manet:
Blond man , around 1880
Édouard Manet:
Portrait of Jean de Cabanès (Ernest Cabaner), around 1880
Édouard Manet:
Portrait of George Moore , 1879
Édouard Manet:
Portrait of Constantin Guys , 1879
Provenance
The picture was in his studio when Manet died in 1883. At the auction of his estate on February 4th and 5th, 1884 in the Paris auction house Hôtel Drouot , the collector M. de la Narde bought it for 150 francs . It then ended up in the collection of Manet's brother Eugène Manet and his wife Berthe Morisot , whose daughter Julie Manet-Rouart later inherited it. After the Rouart family sold the painting, it was first offered by the James Goodman Gallery in New York and then by the Nichido Gallery in Tokyo. After that it was for some time in a private collection not known by name in Japan. On November 3, 2010, it was auctioned in the New York branch of the Sotheby’s auction house and went to an unknown buyer for $ 494,500. On November 7, 2013, the picture was offered again in the same auction house, but found no interested parties at an estimated price of 350,000–550,000 US dollars. It hit the art market in France on June 3, 2015 and was sold to an undisclosed buyer in Sotheby's in Paris for € 183,000.
literature
- Sandra Orienti: Edouard Manet . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-548-36050-5 .
- John Rewald : Eduard Manet, pastels . Bruno Cassirer, Oxford 1947.
- Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné . Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris and Lausanne 1975.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The title Jeune homme à barbe blonde comes from the catalog raisonné Rouart / Wildenstein: Manet , vol. 2, p. 15.
- ↑ The painting had lot number 116 at the auction and was titled Tête d'homme . See Rouart / Wildenstein: Manet , Vol. 2, p. 15.
- ↑ Information on recent sales at http://www.sothebys.com/