Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Works by Manet owned by Degas

Édouard Manet
Madame Manet on a Blue Sofa
ca. 1874
pastel
Louvre

Édouard Manet
Woman with a Cat
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery, London

In 1997 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York mounted an exhibition and published a well-illustrated catalog in an effort to reassemble some portion of the personal art collection of Edgar Degas, dispersed in a series of sales after the artist's death in 1917. The Private Collections of Edgar Degas (available here from the Museum as a free e-book) explores the artist's relationships with several other 19th-century giants of painting  Ingres, Delacroix, Cézanne, Daumier, Morisot, Gauguin, Pissarro, Cassatt, and of course the friend and rival Édouard Manet, acknowledged master of Impressionist brush-work. Today's selection is restricted to the Manets once owned by Degas, who asserted that the Blue Sofa in pastel at top was one of his three favorite pictures in the world (the other two favorites unfortunately not named).

Édouard Manet
study for The Departure of the Folkestone Boat
1869
oil on canvas
Swiss private collection

Édouard Manet
study for The Execution of Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico
ca. 1867-68
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Édouard Manet
Gypsy with cigarette
19th century
oil on canvas
Princeton University Art Museum

Édouard Manet
Berthe Morisot in mourning
1874
oil on canvas
Private collection

Édouard Manet
Cats' Rendezvous
1868
lithograph
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Édouard Manet
Seated woman wearing a soft hat
ca. 1875
wash drawing
Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, San Francisco

Édouard Manet
Olympia
1867
etching, aquatint
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Edgar Degas
Édouard Manet leaning on a table
ca. 1864-68
wash drawing
Louvre
 
Manet and Degas painted, drew, and etched each other repeatedly. This friendly and creative habit could also lead to conflict. Degas painted Manet below, lounging on a sofa and listening to his wife play the piano. Degas gave the painting to Manet. It hung in the Manet apartment until Manet grew dissatisfied with his wife's likeness, which he came to regard as unflattering. (Manet's own painting of his wife at the piano in exactly the same position is included at bottom for comparison, although Degas never owned it.) With the boldness of a very close friend and fellow-painter, Manet simply sliced off a strip of the painting and excised his wife's face. When Degas saw the mutilation, he angrily took back the painting. There is a photograph of it hanging in the Degas apartment in its truncated state, but then at a later date Degas added a strip of canvas the same size as the strip Manet sliced off. Evidently Degas intended to restore the painting to its original appearance, but never carried the intention through. With its right end blank, it now hangs in a provincial museum in Japan.

Edgar Degas
Monsieur and Madame Édouard Manet
ca. 1868-69
oil on canvas
Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Japan

Édouard Manet
Madame Manet at the Piano
1867-68
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay