Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé (Édouard Manet)
Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé
Édouard Manet , 1876
Oil on canvas
27 × 36 cm
Musée d'Orsay

The portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé (French: Portrait de Stéphane Mallarmé) is a picture by the painter Édouard Manet . It was created in 1876 and shows the poet Stéphane Mallarmé , who was on friendly terms with the painter. It was shown publicly for the first time in 1884 after Manet's death. Originally the canvas was only 27 × 34 centimeters. According to Adolphe Tabarant , Manet sewed a two-centimeter strip on the right while working on the picture.

description

The canvas shows Mallarmé in a casual pose on a chaise longue . He is dressed in dark clothes, bends his upper body slightly to the right, and looks thoughtfully down out of the picture. The right hand holds a burning cigar, the smoke from it rises, and rests on an open book or a flat pile of paper. The left hand is in the side pocket of his frock coat except for the thumb . Two rows of buttons can be seen on the frock coat, the light fabric of his shirt lights up on the sleeves. The chaise longue is covered with a light, apparently floral fabric. In the background of the picture you can see an ocher-colored wallpaper, also decorated with plant patterns.

Manet and Mallarmé

When the picture was taken, Manet and Mallarmé had been known for three years. This can be inferred from a letter from Félicien Rops to Manet. They had been friends since Mallarmé had campaigned for Manet during the Renaissance because the jury of the Salon de Paris rejected several of the painter's pictures. Since then Mallarmé, who was also friends with Renoir , Monet , Gauguin and other painters, has visited Manet almost every day on the way home from his work as an English teacher. In his essay Le Jury de peinture pour 1874 et M. Manet , Mallarmé directed against the narrow-mindedness of criticism. Mallarmé wrote:

The large audience, from whom nothing can be concealed ... will one day recognize the importance of the entire work and its turning away from the outdated will then be all the more thorough ...

In his essay The Impressionists and Édouard Manet , Mallarmé campaigned a second time for his friend in 1876 and praised Manet's art as the perfect embodiment of the modern spirit . Düchting assumes that the portrait discussed is to be seen as thanks for this partisanship. The warm friendship between artist and poet is expressed in the casual posture. For Georges Bataille , the image is equally extraordinary in art history and literature. The friendship of two great spirits shines again ( Dans l'histoire de l'art et de la littérature, ce tableau est exceptionnel. Il rayonne l'amitié de deux grands esprits ).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Pierre Courthion: Manet . DuMont Buchverlag 1990, page 100
  2. ^ Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists . Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2002, page 97
  3. ^ Petra Buschhoff-Leineweber in Edouard Manet and the Impressionists . Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2002, page 172
  4. ^ Hajo Düchting: Manet, Paris life . Prestel Verlag, Munich 1995, page 92