id: 134236 accession number: 1956.718 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1956.718 updated: 2024-03-26 01:58:40.904000 Claire Campbell, 1876. Edouard Manet (French, 1832–1883). Pastel with oil on beige canvas; unframed: 55.2 x 45.7 cm (21 3/4 x 18 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Fanny Tewksbury King Collection 1956.718 title: Claire Campbell title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1876 creation date earliest: 1876 creation date latest: 1876 current location: creditline: The Fanny Tewksbury King Collection copyright: --- culture: America, 19th century technique: pastel with oil on beige canvas department: Drawings collection: DR - French type: Drawing find spot: catalogue raisonne: Rouart and Wildenstein 70 --- CREATORS * Edouard Manet (French, 1832–1883) - artist Born into a wealthy family, Édouard Manet was encouraged in his artistic curiosity by his uncle and often visited the Louvre with his college friend Antonin Proust. Initially, however, Manet wanted to pursue a naval career. It was not until he failed the entrance exams for the naval academy that he decided to pursue a career as an artist. In 1850 he entered the studio of Couture (q.v.), whose reputation had risen sharply after exhibiting his Romans of the Decadence (Salon 1847, Musée d'Orsay, Paris). Couture wanted to circumvent conventional academic training and combined traditional painting methods with new techniques-for example, allowing underpaint to form an intrinsic part of the final composition, which resulted in a sketchy appearance. Manet would absorb this technique into his work. He had no strict need to sell his artwork; rather, he longed for recognition as an artist. He responded to Charles Baudelaire's call to young artists to paint contemporary life rather than antiquity and take a distanced point of view, because, as Baudelaire stated in his article The Painter of Modern Life (published in Le Figaro, 1863), objectivity is more sincere and honest. In 1863 the Salon jury rejected more than half of the five thousand works submitted, including Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). In response to the conservative jury of that year, Napoleon III, in an effort to appease the artists as well as discourage antigovernment sentiment, organized the Salon des Refusés, which took place in the Palais des Champs-Élysées two weeks after the opening of the official Salon. The painting caused a formidable succès de scandale both for its technique and subject matter. The majority of the people failed to understand that the artist wanted to translate the conventions of the Old Masters into a new idiom that would reflect contemporary society. Two years later the scandal was repeated when Manet's Olympia (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) was accepted into the Salon of 1865. This time the jury was more lenient because fewer academicians were among its members. Even though his work often received severe criticism, Manet continued to submit works to the Salon, which he felt was the only legitimate place to compete and prove himself as an artist. At the time of the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1867, Manet, following Courbet's (q.v.) lead set in 1855, organized his own pavilion next to the Exposition where he showed more than fifty paintings. Émile Zola, the French writer and critic who may have collaborated with Manet in writing the preface for his one-man exhibition, recognized his talent and modernity. Zola rejected academic painting of the day, including Alexandre Cabanel's (1823-1889) The Birth of Venus (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), which not only won the gold medal at the Salon of 1863 but was purchased by Napoleon III. Zola vehemently defended Manet against harsh criticism and exalted him as the greatest painter of the nineteenth century. Manet painted a portrait of Zola (Salon 1868, Musée d'Orsay, Paris) that reflected the artist's interest in Japanese prints as well as photography. By the 1870s Manet's palette had lightened and his brushwork became freer and more sketchy. These new features in his painting technique may have resulted from his contact with the younger impressionist group that began exhibiting as such in 1874. Although Manet was friendly with its members and sympathized with their goals, he never exhibited with them and continued to show his paintings at the official Salon. Manet was truly innovative in depicting subjects of urban life. However, during his lifetime he enjoyed little support, and it was not until the impressionists gained general recognition that Manet was acknowledged as a truly modern painter. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) would express his immense admiration for Manet as follows: "He was the first to act by reflex, thus simplifying the painter's métier, . . . Manet was direct as could be."1 1. Matisse in L'Intransigeant (25 January 1932), cited in Manet 1832-1883, 18. --- measurements: Unframed: 55.2 x 45.7 cm (21 3/4 x 18 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: description: fabric, nailed to wooden stretcher watermarks: inscriptions: inscription: inscribed, lower left, in light gray pastel: Manet [partially underlined]; lower left, in light blue pastel: 1876 translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: French Art Since Eighteen Hundred opening date: 1929-11-08T05:00:00 French Art Since Eighteen Hundred. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 8-December 8, 1929). title: Mary Cassatt and the Feminine Ideal in Nineteenth-Century Paris opening date: 2012-10-04T00:00:00 Mary Cassatt and the Feminine Ideal in Nineteenth-Century Paris. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (October 14, 2012-January 20, 2013). title: Pure Color: Pastels from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2016-11-19T05:00:00 Pure Color: Pastels from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 19, 2016-March 19, 2017). title: Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2023-01-20T05:00:00 Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 20-April 30, 2023). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * {'description': 'Exposition des oeuvres de Édouard Manet. École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (January 1884).', 'opening_date': None} * {'description': 'Manet: Trente-cinq tableaux de la collection Pellerin. Moderne Galerie, Munich (1910); Paul Cassirer Gallery, Berlin (March 24 - April 24, 1910); Bernheim Jeune & Cie., Paris (June 1910).', 'opening_date': '1910-03-24T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists. Grafton Gallery, London (November 8, 1910 - January 15, 1911).', 'opening_date': '1910-11-08T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'Exhibition of Paintings by Contemporary French Artists at the Galleries of M. Knoedler & Co. Knoedler & Co., New York (January 5 - 29, 1916).', 'opening_date': '1916-01-05T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'Exhibition of Paintings by Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Pierre Auguste Renoir. Cleveland Museum of Art (December 9, 1924 - January 15, 1925).', 'opening_date': '1924-12-09T00:00:00'} --- PROVENANCE Claire Campbell date: 1882 - at least 1884 footnotes: *