The Blonde with Bare Breasts

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The Blonde with Bare Breasts: Edouard Manet

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Edouard Manet Oil Painting - The Blonde with Bare Breasts

Keywords: Blonde, Bare, Breasts

Work Overview: The Blonde with Bare Breasts
Edouard Manet
Original Title: La Blonde aux seins nus
Date: 1878; Paris, France *
Style: Impressionism
Genre: nude painting (nu)
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 52 x 62 cm
Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

The 1870s were rich in female models for Manet: the Brunette with Bare Breasts, the Blonde with Bare Breasts and the Sultana testify to it.

In this painting the canvas is barely covered by the thick oils spread here and there on the surface, while highlights of white or red-ochre render the flesh tone of the nude. It was painted in inspired improvisation.

A gang offers money for stealing the Édouard Manet painting La blonde aux seins nus (The Blonde with Bare Breasts) from the museum. The brothers agree to steal the painting. Louis steals the painting, while the young guard Rosalie (Vahina Giocante) is distracted. Rosalie comes after him, but Louis manages to lock her up. She is later freed to move around on the ship. Although she is sometimes treated rudely, she likes the adventure. The police suspect her of being involved in the theft. She helps by hiding the painting and herself, when the ship is searched.

Manet is one of the greatest painters of women and the female body. Breaking with the academicism of the schools and successful artists, he began by presenting us the fresh nude form of Victorine Meurend in Luncheon on the Crass. Then he painted Olympia, using the same model. By academic canons, she is a monstrosity, but there is something naive and startling about her, something which touches a new chord in the onlooker. After that, Manet painted few nudes until 1872, when he painted the Brunette with Bare Breasts, posed by a model he used only occasionally. The Brunette lacks the physical appeal of the Blonde, which was painted in the studio lent to Manet by the Swedish artist Rosen. The model's name was Marguerite. She also posed for the Tub and the Woman with a Garter. Tabarant talks of her "chubby little face" and wonders how Moreau-Nelaton could have taken her for Ellen Andree.

The flesh tints are magnificent. The pearl glow of the skin has been admirably set off by the pale green background. With a sure hand, the artist has added a few finishing touches of aerial lightness. The pink and white body is bathed in light and resembles, as Gustave Geffroy wrote, "flower and fruit - an exquisite evocation of living and perishable flesh."

After The Blonde with Bare Breasts, Manet executed a number of pastel portraits of the women who came to see him at Bellevue, Rueil, Versailles, and in his home in Paris. To our eyes, this last series of portraits - heiresses, young girls, actresses, and models - is a lingering farewell of the artist to womankind.

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Edouard Manet

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