The Balcony

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The Balcony: Edouard Manet

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Edouard Manet Oil Painting - The Balcony

Keywords: Balcony

Work Overview: The Balcony
Artist Édouard Manet
Year 1868
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 170 cm × 124 cm (67 in × 49 in)
Location Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The Balcony (French: Le balcon) is an 1868-69 oil painting by the French painter Édouard Manet. The painting depicts four figures on a balcony, one sitting and the others standing. Seated on the left is the painter Berthe Morisot, who became the wife of Manet's brother, Eugène in 1874. In the centre is the painter Jean Baptiste Antoine Guillemet. On the right is Fanny Claus, a violinist. The fourth figure, partially obscured in the interior's background, is possibly Léon Leenhoff, Manet's son.[1] It was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1869, and then kept by Manet until his death in 1883. It was sold to the painter Gustave Caillebotte in 1884, who left it to the French state in 1894. It is currently held at the Musée d'Orsay, in Paris.The painting, inspired by Majas on the Balcony (fr) by Francisco Goya, was created at the same time and with the same purpose as Luncheon in the Studio.

The three characters, who were all friends of Manet, seem to be disconnected from each other: while Berthe Morisot, on the left, looks like a romantic and inaccessible heroine, the young violinist Fanny Claus and the painter Antoine Guillemet seem to display indifference. The boy in the background is probably Manet's son, Léon. Just behind the railings, there are a hydrangea in a ceramic pot, and a dog with a ball below Morisot's chair.[2]

This was the first portrait of Morisot by Manet. Manet adopts a retrained colour palette, dominated by white, green and black, with a accents of blue (Guillemet's tie) and red (Morisot's fan).

Manet made many preparatory studies, painting the four subjects individually many times: Guillemet as many as fifteen times. A preparatory study for The Balcony was painted at Boulogne in 1868. This unfinished portrait of Fanny Claus, the closest friend of Manet’s wife Suzanne Leenhoff; Claus married Manet's friend Pierre Prins in 1869. The work was bought after Manet's death in a studio sale by John Singer Sargent. The portrait had only been seen once in public since it was first painted in 1868, but in 2012 the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford succeeded in raising the funds to acquire it and keep it permanently in a public collection in the United Kingdom.

The painting was not well received when it was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1869. The aggressive and bold green of the balcony rails drew much attention, as evidenced by the article devoted to the work by the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle in 1878 which stated:[5] "This painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1869 and is one of those who contributed to form this reputation for eccentricity realistic, this reputation of bad taste that was attached to Mr. Manet." The press considered the painting as "discordant". The contrast of colours (the background completely black, the white faces and clothes, the blue tie of the man, and the green railings) contributes to create an atmosphere of "mystery".[2]

Manet deliberately eschewed any sense of connection between the figures, treating them more like objects in a still life than living people. None of them looks at the others. One commentator, the caricaturist Cham, sarcastically called for the shutters to be closed. Morisot herself said "Je suis plus étrange que laide; il paraît que l'épithète de femme fatale a circulé parmi les curieux ("I look more peculiar than ugly; it seems that people asking about it have used the words femme fatale to describe me."). Albert Wolff described it as "coarse art"" at "the level of house painters".

Manet kept the painting until his death in 1883, hanging it near his painting of Olympia. It was bought from the sale of Manet's estate in February 1884 by Gustave Caillebotte, who paid 3,000 francs. Caillebotte displayed it in a prominent position in his house at Gennevilliers. On his death in 1894, Caillebotte's will left the painting, with other works, to the French state. It was displayed at the Musée du Luxembourg from 1896 to 1929, then at the Musée du Louvre until 1986 (from 1947, at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume). It was transferred to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986.

When Manet painted this piece, scenes of bourgeois life were in vogue. Yet The Balcony went against the conventions of the day. All the subjects were close acquaintances of the artist, especially Berthe Morisot who here, pictured sitting in the foreground, makes her first appearance in Manet's work, and who went on to become one of his favourite models. The painting tells no story or anecdote; the protagonists are frozen, as if isolated in an interior dream, evidence that Manet was freeing himself from academic constraints, despite the obvious reference to Goya's Majas at the Balcony.

At its presentation at the 1869 Salon, this enigmatic group portrait was overwhelmingly misunderstood. "Close the shutters!" was the sarcastic reaction of the caricaturist Cham while another critic attacked "this gross art" and Manet who "lowered himself to the point of being in competition with the painters of the building trade". The vividness of the colours, the green of the balustrade and shutters, the blue of the man's tie, as well as the brutal contrast between the white dresses and the darkness of the background, were perceived as provocation. The hierarchy usually attached to human figures and objects has been disregarded: the flowers receiving more detail than some of the faces.

It is not surprising then, that a painting which took such liberties with tradition, convention and realism so shocked its early public.

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The Balcony is a 67 inch by 49 inch oil painting in the Realist tradition by Edouard Manet. It was painted in 1868 and was shown at the Salon of the Academie des Beaux-Arts the following year. Critics there thought it excessively eccentric and peculiarly colored. It is now displayed in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

Description
The painting shows three people on a balcony. In the foreground, a woman in a white dress sits on a bench. Her arm rests on the balcony railing. At her feet is a small brown and white dog with a ball. To the left of her is a white flowering plant in a decorative pot. She gazes off into the distance.

To the right and slightly behind the seated woman stands another woman in white. She holds a green umbrella with tassels in her arms. She is wearing a hat and she adjusts her tan gloves, as if she is preparing to depart. She gazes out, seemingly at the viewer.

To the left of the second woman and slightly behind her is a man in a dark suit with a blue tie. His hands are clenched in front of him as he gazes over the balcony in an unrelated direction to either woman’s gaze. Behind the trio on the balcony, a shadowy room contains a fourth man who looks out at the trio over his shoulder. The scene is framed by the green shutters and railing of the balcony.

Technique
After Manet met Morisot, the woman painter who is pictured sitting on the bench, she convinced him to try plein air painting. The direct, almost harsh lighting of the painting suggests that it might have been painted at least partially en plein air. The painting was partially inspired by a balcony painting by Goya. Manet often painted scenes that echoed Renaissance works, but his style and techniques were thoroughly modern. This juxtaposition was problematic for early viewers and critics of Manet’s work.

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