It has become a tradition on this blog to mark the birthday (in 1832) of one of my favourite painters, the great Edouard Manet. This year's picture is one I have actually seen, on the canvas, since the last birthday. It hangs on the walls of the Barber Institute in Birmingham, which I visited last autumn. A portrait of Manet's friend and fellow artist Carolus-Duran, it is clearly unfinished (especially the landscape background), but it has a huge presence, in part because of its size: it is over 6ft tall and almost as wide. The nonchalant swagger of Carolus-Duran's pose is caught perfectly, and his dress suggests he has just ridden over from his nearby country home. Manet at the time was staying on the estate of a wealthy patron near Paris, where, he wrote, 'there is too much entertainment here to work seriously', but he and Carolus-Duran agreed to paint each other's portraits (Carolus-Duran was famous for his portraits of members of Parisian high society). In return for Manet's grand, if sketchy, swagger portrait, Carolus-Duran painted this affectionate, informal portrait of his friend, adopting a loose, easy style perfectly in keeping with its subject. It is perhaps the most attractive portrait we have of the often rather forbidding-looking Manet.
No comments:
Post a Comment