Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus

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Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus
Édouard Manet , 1868
111 × 70 cm
Oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum , Oxford

The portrait of Mademoiselle Claus is a painting by the French painter Édouard Manet from 1868. The 111 × 70 cm picture, painted in oil on canvas, shows violinist Fanny Claus, who is friends with the Manet family, sitting on a balcony. The painting is considered a preliminary study for Manet's well-known work The Balcony . Since its inception, the work has been in private collections and has rarely been exhibited in public. After a large-scale fundraising campaign, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford acquired the painting in 2012.

Image description

Édouard Manet: The balcony , painting, 1868–1869, Musée d'Orsay
Édouard Manet: The balcony , drawing, 1868, private collection

The picture shows a balcony with two people. A little to the left of the center of the picture, 22-year-old Fanny Claus (1846–1877), dressed entirely in white, sits on a stool covered with red fabric. She is turned slightly to the right edge of the picture, crossed her legs and placed it next to the stool. She does not look at the viewer, but fixes her eyes on a point to the right outside the picture. Most of the painting is only sketchy and the brown background of the canvas is partially visible. For example, the sitter's hands on her lap are only hinted at. The noticeably elongated head of Fanny Claus is different, with the pale face highlighted by sharp contours. The dark, wide-open eyes with the arched eyebrows, the elongated nose and the narrow pink lips are clearly visible. In her pinned up hair, she wears a ribbon or ring on which a strikingly large flower arrangement in pink covers the front part of the head and extends far over the forehead, where the leaf tips below look like a kind of V-shaped pony hairstyle . In addition to this striking jewelry, Mademoiselle Claus only wears a narrow, dark ribbon around her neck, on which, however, no pendant is visible. She is dressed in a long white summer dress, which is almost transparent in the area of ​​the shoulders and arms. The dress, which has a V-shaped cut in the chest area, has a mauve-colored sash tied around the waist. The feet, clad in white stockings and black shoes, peek out from under the floor-to-ceiling dress. A black scarf lies on the stool behind the seated Fanny Claus and extends down to the floor. In front of it is another black accessory, possibly a handkerchief or a pair of gloves.

Next to the sitter, also in a white dress, stands an unknown second female person who is largely cut off from the right edge of the picture. Only the area from the left shoulder down can be seen from it, above which the profile of a face is indicated. The second woman put her left elbow on the balcony railing so that her hand sticks into the apartment behind the balcony. The two people are therefore looking in different directions. Above the shoulder is an elongated, diagonal brown handle that may be part of a parasol that this person is holding in their right hand. One such prop holds Fanny Claus, who is then standing, folded up in front of his chest in Manet's later The Balcony .

In the foreground of the picture, the greenish balcony grille is sketched in front of the two women. In front of Fanny Claus's chest is the upper part of the grid with two horizontal parallel struts that extend from the left to the right edge of the picture. Such horizontal parallel struts are also in the area of ​​the feet of the sitter. There is also a thicker strut as a conclusion at the bottom of the picture. Two vertical struts run down from Fanny Claus's left shoulder. The area to the right of this is provided with diagonal struts. There is no such grid on the left. The green shutter takes up a large space on the left in the background . In the upper part up to the head of Fanny Claus the lamellas are clearly visible, in the lower part such a detailed execution is missing. The rest of the background represents the only sketched and barely lit interior of the apartment, where details can only be guessed at. In contrast, the foreground of the picture is fully illuminated by the sunlight. Shadows are only present below the stool and the dress on the gray-brown floor of the balcony and otherwise only indicated in the chin area of ​​the sitter.

As in the later picture The Balcony , the position of the viewer remains unclear . The direct comparison with the people means that a view from street level up to the balcony, where it is unclear at which height it is, is ruled out. The image section is too small and the scenery too close for a view of the balcony from a building opposite. The art historian Françoise Cachin points out that Manet could not possibly have “hovering in free space - take a stand” and that the representation had “something artificial”. Like all of Manet's oil sketches, this picture is neither signed nor dated by the painter. The art historian Michael Wilson suspects that Manet never intended to continue the picture.

About the creation of the painting

Édouard Manet: Angelina , 1860-1865
Francisco de Goya: Majas on a Balcony , around 1835

Even before the portrait of Mademoiselle Claus , Manet had chosen the motif of a woman at the open window in the painting Angelina , created between 1860 and 1865 . This image corresponded to a Spanish fashion that predominated in the Second Empire , especially in the 1860s, which was reinforced not least by the Empress Eugénie , who came from Spain . Edouard Manet created a number of paintings with Spanish motifs and in 1865 visited Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo and Madrid to study the works of Spanish painters. In Angelina Manet shows a Spanish-looking woman with a black fan and a mantilla behind a balcony railing. Francisco de Goyas Majas on a balcony could have inspired him for this picture, as well as for the later works Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus and finally for The Balcony . He may have seen a version of the picture in his youth in the Espagnole Gallery in the Louvre , and he must have known a reproduction of the picture. Already in Angelina Manet chose a “floating” position far above street level and shows the interior of the apartment behind the sitter as an undefined dark area. Goya's balcony shows even clearer parallels to the portrait of Mademoiselle Claus . The woman on the left in the picture has taken the same seated position on the stool as Fanny Claus and the white dress could have been a model for Manet's picture. In addition, similar motifs with women on the balcony can also be found in the work of the French Constantin Guys .

According to Manet's biographer Étienne Moreau-Nélaton , the real inspiration for the portrait of Mademoiselle Claus and the later painting The Balcony was the painter's stay in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1868. There Manet observed people at a window with a balcony who were in the full light of the sun, while the background was in the dark. The portrait of Mademoiselle Claus , however, was not made in Boulogne, but in Manet's Paris studio at 81 rue Guyot.This is indicated by the shutter and the balcony grille in the painting, which are also found in the Batignolles district in Paris , where Manet Studio was.

For the implementation of his picture idea, Manet did not choose a professional model, but resorted to a person from his circle of friends. Manet preferred friends or family members as people in his pictures, since professional models seemed too unnatural in their poses. Fanny Claus had been a friend of the Manet family for some time. The concert violinist was a member of the Saint-Cécile Quartet and made music with the painter's wife, Suzanne Manet , who played the piano herself. Fanny Claus later married the painter Pierre-Ernest Prins, who was friends with Manet .

The painting The Balcony also has a composition drawing (private collection) from 1868, on which the three people on the balcony are already in their later arrangement. Only a few details differ from the finished painting. The drawing shows the woman sitting on the left with an open parasol over her shoulder; in the final version, the standing Fanny Claus has this parasol clamped in front of her chest. It is unclear whether this drawing was made before the portrait of Mademoiselle Claus . This is supported by the position of the viewer, which is much lower in the drawing, and the larger space occupied by the shutters. While these are still fully reproduced on both sides in the drawing, Manet only painted them partially in the portrait of Mademoiselle Claus and in The Balcony . It remains open what purpose the portrait of Mademoiselle Claus served for Manet. As a mere preliminary study, the picture with the head of Fanny Claus in particular is too elaborate. On the other hand, Manet could have tried out various aspects with the portrait of Mademoiselle Claus, such as the viewer's point of view, the incidence of light or the choice of color for the subsequent motif. The main question that remains completely unanswered is why Manet depicted Fanny Claus, who was initially seated, in the painting The Balcony as a standing person and why her place was replaced by Berthe Morisot in the later picture .

Provenance

The painting remained in his possession until Manet's death in 1883. At the auction of his estate on February 4 and 5, 1884 at the Parisian auction house Hôtel Drouot , the painter John Singer Sargent bought the picture, known as Le Balcon, esquisse , for 580 francs . After Sargent's death in 1925, the picture became the property of his sister Violet Ormond (1870–1955), who bequeathed it to their daughter Reine Violet Pitman (1897–1971). Their descendants kept the painting until it was put up for sale in 2011. Since the auction in 1884, the portrait of Mademoiselle Claus has only been publicly exhibited once. To mark the centenary of Manet's death, the family loaned the picture to the Manet at Work exhibition in London's National Gallery in 1983 .

After an offer of £ 28.35 million to buy the painting from an unnamed buyer from abroad was presented in 2011 , the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art , a body responsible for the export of art , spoke out against the export of the picture out. Thereupon, on December 8, 2011, the British Undersecretary Ed Vaizey placed the portrait of Mademoiselle Claus with a temporary export ban until August 7, 2012 because of its "outstanding cultural importance" in the UK get the opportunity to raise the - reduced - purchase price through donations. The Ashmolean Museum expressed an interest in Manet's painting and launched a fundraising campaign to raise a purchase price of £ 7.83 million. The reduction to 27% of the originally named purchase price was achieved through simultaneous tax reductions for the seller. In the following eight months, the Ashmolean Museum was able to raise the necessary purchase price, whereby the large donations of 5.9 million pounds by the Heritage Lottery Fund and 850,000 pounds by The Art Fund made a significant contribution to the success of the campaign. The remaining purchase price was collected through donations from other foundations and numerous individual donors.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The image is rarely dealt with in German-language literature. Meier-Graefe used the French name Le Balcon, esquisse , see Julius Meier-Graefe: Manet , p. 318.Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus is the German equivalent of the name used by Wilson, Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus , see Michael Wilson: Manet at Work , P. 27. The term portrait of Fraulein Claus used in the press is not found in the specialist literature. See article in Welt Online from August 8, 2012 .
  2. ↑ The dimensions are taken from the Ashmolean Museum 2012 press release The Ashmolean campaigns to save a masterpiece by Manet for the nation Ashmolean Museum press release from February 25, 2012 InternetArchiveBot ( Memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 162 kB) . In the literature, however, the dimensions are given as 71 × 43 cm. See Michael Wilson: Manet at work , p. 26.
  3. ^ Françoise Cachin in the Manet 1984 exhibition catalog , p. 304.
  4. ↑ “it is unlikely that Manet ever intended to carry it further” Michael Wilson in Manet at Work , p. 26.
  5. ↑ Angelina was first exhibited in public in 1867. The exact date of origin is not known, various authors assume 1860–1864 as the period of origin, other authors prefer the year 1865. See Gary Tinterow, Geneviève Lacambre: Manet / Velázquez , p. 493 and Mikael Wivel: Manet , p. 86.
  6. ^ Mikael Wivel: Manet , p. 86.
  7. ↑ See Françoise Cachin in the exhibition catalog Manet , 1984, p. 304.
  8. ^ Etching after Goya's picture Maya on the balcony by Charles Yriarte in Francisco Zapater y Gómez: Goya . Manuel Sola, Zaragoza 1868. See Françoise Cachin in the exhibition catalog Manet 1984, p. 304.
  9. ↑ Stéphane Guégan: Manet inventeur du moderne , p. 143.
  10. ^ Statement by Étienne Moreau-Nélaton in Gotthard Jedlicka: Manet , p. 151.
  11. ^ Nancy Locke: Manet and the Family Romance , p. 126.
  12. ↑ See Françoise Cachin in the exhibition catalog Manet , 1984, p. 302.
  13. ↑ See Françoise Cachin in the exhibition catalog Manet , 1984, p. 308.
  14. ↑ Michael Wilson: Manet at Work , p. 26.
  15. ↑ Julius Meier-Graefe: Eduard Manet , p. 318.
  16. ↑ Violet Ormond is referred to as Mrs. Hugo Piman in the catalog raisonné. See Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein: Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné , Paris and Lausanne 1975 Volume 1 No. 133.
  17. ↑ Michael Wilson: Manet at Work , p. 26.
  18. ^ Edouard Manet's "Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus" acquired by the Ashmolean Museum Information on purchasing the painting at artdaily.org
  19. ↑ The Ashmolean campaigns to save a masterpiece by Manet for the nation Press release of the Ashmolean Museum from February 25, 2012 InternetArchiveBot ( Memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 162 kB)