Music in the Tuileries Garden

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Music in the Tuileries Gardens (Édouard Manet)
Music in the Tuileries Garden
Édouard Manet , 1862
Oil on canvas
76 × 118 cm
National Gallery , London and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (alternating)

Music in the Tuileries Garden is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet . The 1.18 × 0.76 meter picture was created in 1862 . The painting is jointly owned by the National Gallery in London and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and is exhibited alternately in both museums.

background

"This art is not healthy."

This was the criticism on the occasion of the exhibition of the picture on March 1, 1863 in the Galerie Martinet on the Boulevard des Italiens. The audience was completely overwhelmed with this new and very unconventional painting technique. The writer Émile Zola even remembered a visitor who threatened violence if this eyesore did not disappear from the exhibition. Zola continues:

“Imagine a crowd under the trees of the Tuileries, maybe a hundred people, moving in the sun. Every person is a simple, barely definite blob in which the details become lines or black dots. "

Zola recommends the viewer to keep a “respectful distance” from the picture, then he will also be able to recognize something. However, the audience was neither interested in respectful distance nor in respect at all. The painting was not for sale for 20 years.

The paintings

Zola's tip is partly correct: at a certain distance, those details of the picture that are sharply outlined become clearer - above all the figures of male strollers and female strollers on the left wing of the picture, the standing stroller above the open parasol and the one in his back to the right turned man who lifts his hat. The lady opposite the standing flaneur, however, and the center of the picture framed by both figures like a gusset, are blatantly blurred and apparently on purpose, because a piece of blue sky from the upper edge of the picture points to this vertical picture like an arrow. Seen from a distance, the yellow and gray patches of color that can be seen here are as little vivid as some of the figures on the right wing of the picture that the painter merely sketches in a sudden change from sharpness to blurring in the same image segment. A scene from the famous Tuileries Gardens in Paris is shown . Manet had spent many summer afternoons there, making his first sketches under the curious gaze of the walkers. However, he completed this painting in his studio . The chairs in the foreground of the picture are authentic, because in the summer of 1862 all the wooden chairs in the garden were replaced by iron chairs, as can be seen particularly clearly in the front right of the picture. In addition, Manet has hidden some familiar faces in the picture: friends, acquaintances, critics and opinion makers. The flaneur in the center of the picture with the white trousers, who turns to the left, is striking: it is Manet's brother Eugène . Directly behind him in front of the tree is the portrait of the composer Jacques Offenbach , it looks like a caricature . Manet has portrayed himself, cut from the left edge of the picture, standing next to his former studio mate, the painter Albert de Balleroy . If you turn your gaze from the two painters a little to the right, you can see more faces: The seated male, whose face appears next to a pointed yellow hat, is the journalist Zacharie Astruc , behind him the man with the mustache is his colleague Aurélien Scholl . The man standing a little further to the right who seems to be looking at the viewer is the painter Henri Fantin-Latour . Much more indistinct, but identified by connoisseurs, is the group of people who are directly above the yellow-clad women. This group is linked to the black tree path that symbolically centers the left wing of the picture. You can see the profile of the poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire , right next to him the three-quarter portrait of the poet art critic Théophile Gautier , who appears to be leaning against the tree trunk, and opposite both of them the profile figure of the museum official Baron Isidor Taylor . This group of three opens up the aesthetic program of the picture, which the Swedish art historian Nils Gösta Sandblad first recognized.

In 1835 Taylor bought paintings by Velázquez, Zurbaran, Murillo and Goya on behalf of the citizen king Louis-Philippe I in Spain, which could be seen in the gallery espagnol of the Louvre from 1838. Théophile Gautier had also traveled to Spain during the July monarchy and published his travelogue in 1845. This enthusiasm for Spain of the older romantic generation had through the marriage of Napoleon III. received new impetus with the Spanish princess Eugénie de Montijo in January 1853 and reached a new high point in 1862 when Manet painted "Music in the Tuileries Garden". This summer a Spanish ballet group performed with the famous dancer Lola de Valence in the Hippodrome of Paris and attracted countless visitors, including Manet, who attended the performances together with Baudelaire and some pictures (paintings, drawings, etchings) of the dancer Lola, of the dancer Don Mariano Cambrubi and the Spanish ballet troupe. With the group of three Baudelaire, Gautier and Taylor, Manet inscribed the genealogy of his aesthetic in his painting.

Initially, Manet copied some of the figures in his picture from the painting "The Little Cavaliers" bought by the Louvre in 1851, which at the time was believed to be a work by Velázquez ; after this work Manet had created a colored etching in 1861–62. The image-defining contrast of "black" and "white", however, is not based on the "Little Cavaliers" or on Velázquez's portrait painting, but rather on the art of painting and etching by de Goya . While the enthusiasm for Spanish art in general connects the younger Baudelaire with Gautier and Taylor as representatives of the older romantic generation, the closer connection to Manet emerges through Goya.

Because beyond Eugène Delacroix , Baudelaire Goya mentions Goya in his poem Les Phares as a model for his pessimistic aesthetic. In 1857 he published an essay on Goya's etchings as an expression of the "absolutely comical". Baudelaire understood the absolute comic to be an aesthetic of the bitterest irony that his "Flowers of Evil" put into practice. This absolutely comic distinguishes Baudelaire from the "historically comic" of the French painter and caricaturist Honoré Daumier , who, according to Baudelaire, took an incorruptible but benevolent look at the dark side of modern society and modern city life, as has been the case since the city was rebuilt designed by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann . In 1859 Baudelaire met the then largely unknown Constantin Guys , whose drawings and watercolors he associated with Daumier's visual aesthetics, and in the winter of 1859 began to write an essay about Guys. This article appears four years after its first conception in November and December 1863 under the title "The painter of modern life" in the magazine Le Figaro .

This closes the circle: In addition to Rembrandt's art of etching, Goya's art of etching, honored by Baudelaire, was an important model for the Société des Aquafortistes, founded in spring 1862 . The founding charter of this society names famous painters and etchers of the romantic generation and representatives of a new generation of artists, including Manet and his friend Henri Fantin-Latour . In April 1862 Baudelaire wrote a first article on the new society and its younger members, and a second in September of the same year. While Manet appears as a mere name in the first article, Baudelaire introduces Manet in his second article as a new great talent in the successor to Gustave Courbet . In this post, Baudelaire attributes "Spanish flavor" to Manet's painting. In addition, he emphasizes Manet's "decided taste" for "modern reality" and announces the exhibition for the coming spring in which "Music in the Tuileries Garden" will be shown, the exhibition in the Martinet Gallery. Contrary to a different legend, which comes from Manet's biographer Antonin Proust , a comparison of the articles shows that Manet and Baudelaire met in the spring of 1862 through the "Society of Erasers" and became close friends in the summer of the same year. In this respect, "Music in the Tuileries Garden" is initially a document of Manet's new friendship with the most important poet and art theorist of his time.

Henri Fantin-Latour's painting Hommage à Delacroix testifies to this friendship among the young members of the Society of Erasers, but in a different form. Compared to this painting, the novelty of Manet's formal language becomes particularly clear. It consists in Manet realizing the image of a densely packed crowd of contemporaries in a concentrated moment of their perception in contrasting and discontinuously placed painterly "spots". Because the protagonists within the crowd stand still on the one hand and are in motion on the other, Manet paints their perceptual images in the same picture close together, sharp and blurred at the same time. This new realization of an aesthetic of perception connects "Music in the Tuileries Garden" with Baudelaire's much-discussed theory of aesthetic modernity, as developed in the essay on the "Painter of Modern Life". One punch line is that Manet's "Music in the Tuileries Garden" presents Baudelaire's theory of modernity a year and a half before the essay was first published as a painted art theory. The critic Alfred Sensier first drew attention to the connection between Baudelaire's and Manet's aesthetics when he wrote about Manet's Olympia in 1865 : "Painting of the Baudelaire school, executed by a student of Goya". The second punch line is that "Music in the Tuileries Garden" differs in one important respect from the watercolored drawings by Constantin Guys and indirectly from Baudelaire's aesthetic of modernity. Unlike Guys, Manet does not work with the tonal values ​​of light and dark. Rather, he translates light and shadow into the contrasting colors of his painting. By renouncing a middle tone that connects the poles of light and dark, Manet gave up the traditional appearance of an aesthetic unity in the world of images, which, after Goya, Delacroix, Daumier and Constantin Guys, Baudelaire also clung to in "Painter of Modern Life" . In contrast to this appearance, Manet's painting proceeds discontinuously in contrast and takes on a material character. In "Music in the Tuileries Garden" Manet accentuates the difference between his painterly process and Baudelaire's ideas of light and dark painting by showing the profiles of Baudelaire, Gautier and Taylor shrouded in shadow. Insofar as he concentrates the older chiaroscuro on this group alone, Manet distances himself from the romantic aesthetics of memory in the name of a new aesthetic of the present. At the same time, Manet joins the depicted crowd by portraying himself on the left edge of the picture in the new light of his cool, sharp-contrast painting. Baudelaire, Gautier and Taylor, on the other hand, are shown in the midst of the agitated, fixed crowd of cool-looking strollers and flaneuses as the last representatives of the older romantic generation.

Painting materials

The pigment analysis of the painting was carried out by scientists at the National Gallery in London. Manet achieved the generally subdued coloring by using earth colors; for the men's black clothes, he used black leg with small additions of colored pigments. The strong colors of the women's hats and capes are painted with cobalt blue and vermilion .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Karin Westerwelle: Charles Baudelaire. Poet and art critic. Wuerzburg 2007.
  2. ↑ Nils Gösta Sandblad: Manet. Three studies in artistic conception. Lund 1954.
  3. ↑ Jeannine Baticle: La galerie espagnole de Louis-Philippe. In: Manet-Velázquez. La manière espagnole au XIXe siècle. Exhibition catalog. Paris 2002, pp. 138-151.
  4. ↑ Théophile Gautier: Voyage en Espagne. Paris 1845.
  5. ↑ Adolphe Tabarant, Manet et ses œuvres, Paris 1947, p. 36 f.
  6. ↑ See Juliet Wilson-Bareau : Manet et l'Espagne. In: Manet-Velázquez. La manière espagnole au XIXe siècle. Exhibition catalog. Paris 2002, pp. 170-215.
  7. ↑ Manet 1832-1883. Exhibition catalog. Paris 1983, no.37.
  8. ^ Charles Baudelaire, Quelques caricaturistes étrangers. In: Claude Pichois (Ed.): Œuvres complètes. Volume 2, Paris 1975-76, pp. 564-574.
  9. ↑ Cf. Bettina Full: Baudelaire's Bildlektüren. Goya and the representation of the comique absolu. In: Westerwelle. 2007, pp. 77-105.
  10. ↑ Baudelaire, Quelques caricaturistes français. In: Œuvres complètes. Volume 2, pp. 544-563.
  11. ↑ Baudelaire, Le peintre de la vie modern. In: Œuvres complètes. Volume 2, pp. 683-724.
  12. ↑ See Jeannine Bailly-Herzberg: L'eau-forte de peintre au dix-neuvième siècle. La Société des Aquafortistes 1862–1867. 2 volumes, Paris 1972.
  13. ^ Baudelaire, L'eau-forte est à la mode. In: Œuvres complètes. Volume 2, pp. 735-736.
  14. ↑ Baudelaire, Peintres et aquafortistes. In: Œuvres complètes. Volume 2, pp. 737-741.
  15. ↑ Xenia Fischer-Loock: Baudelaire and Manet. In: Westerwelle. 2007, pp. 211-242.
  16. ↑ Cf. Monika Steinhauser: The staged gaze of the flaneur. Manet and Baudelaire. In: Yearbook of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. 1, 1994, pp. 9-40.
  17. ↑ See Xenia Fischer-Loock: Music in the Tuilierenpark. How Manet paints Baudelaire's theory of modernity. In: Metaphysics and Modernity. Würzburg 2007, pp. 283-410.
  18. ↑ Alfred Sensier: Salon de 1865. zit. after Timothy Clark: The painting of modern life. Chicago 1984, p. 296, note 140.
  19. ↑ See Michael Fried: Painting Memories: On the Containment of the Past in Baudelaire and Manet. In: Critical Inquiry. 10/3 1984, pp. 510-542.
  20. ^ D. Bomford, J. Kirby, J. Leighton, A. Roy: Art in the Making: Impressionism. National Gallery Publications, London 1990, pp. 112-119.
  21. ↑ Édouard Manet, 'Music in the Tuileries Gardens' , ColourLex

literature

  • Nils Gösta Sandblad: Manet. Three studies in artistic conception. Lund 1954.
  • Monika Steinhauser: The staged gaze of the strollers. Manet and Baudelaire. In: Yearbook of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. 1, 1994, pp. 9-40.
  • Geneviève Lacambe, Gary Tinterow (Eds.): Manet-Velázquez. La manière espagnole au XIXe siècle. Exhibition catalog Réunion des musées nationaux. Paris 2002.
  • Karin Westerwelle (Ed.): Charles Baudelaire. Poet and art critic. Wuerzburg 2007.
  • Xenia Fischer-Loock: Music in the Tuileries Park. How Manet paints Baudelaire's theory of modernity. In: Astrid von der Lühe, Dirk Westerkamp (Ed.): Metaphysics and Modernity. Locations of the philosophical present. Würzburg 2007, pp. 283-310.

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