The House at Rueil

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The House at Rueil: Edouard Manet

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Edouard Manet Oil Painting - The House at Rueil

Keywords: House, Rueil

Work Overview: The House at Rueil
La Maison à Rueil
Edouard Manet
Date: 1882; France *
Style: Impressionism
Genre: cityscape
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 73.5 x 92.8 cm
Location: National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne, Australia

The painting “The House at Ruiel” was created in 1882, one year before Manet’s death. It measures 92.3 x 71.5 cm (width x height). It should portray the house of comedy writer Eugene Labiche in Rueil-Malmaison, not too far from Paris, where Manet stayed as a guest.

A hot summer’s day in gleaming light. The painter is seated in the shade from the trees on a nearly white gravel path. His glance falls upon the sunlit house in front of him. We can only see a part of the two storey house. The facade is one of a French cottage with classical elements. The walls are decorated in a light yellow. The window shutters are in a very light blue. Some of the windows are open, letting in air, warmth or light. Others are closed by window shutters or curtains. The front door seems to be open, yet it’s hidden behind a tree that’s growing out of a roundabout. Under the tree are hostas and some red blossomed flowers. To the left we see a welcoming white bench. To the right, outlines of a low chair with perhaps a blanket or a cloak in it. One can almost see the difference between standing in the shade, as if the painter was standing or sitting in front of the house in the sun. Perhaps Manet escaped the mid-day heat from the sun to sit in the shade to paint this contrast between sun and shade.

In his fiftieth year, at the height of his talent, Manet became seriously ill. His left leg was amputated and he died a long and agonizing death. He continued painting as long as he was physically able. Retreating to Rueil, he spent his last summer almost entirely immobilized by locomotor ataxia. There he set himself under the shade of an acacia to paint his last landscape, House at Rueil, his touch lighter and more vibrant than ever.

The project to reframe Manet’s, The house at Rueil, 1882, began in 2006. Proposals for reframing were tabled at a frame committee meeting in April. At this meeting the Senior Curator International Art recalled an image of the framed painting on exhibition in 1884. The image appears in MANET RACONTÉ PAR LUI-MÊME, 1926, and includes images of all the paintings on display in the posthumous Manet retrospective of 1884.
Considerable research was undertaken to determine what the frame in the photograph actually looked like. Initially it was thought a period frame would be found but the frame appears to be a singular example. A quote to construct a replica, based on the available evidence, was received in April 2008. After much deliberation the frieze section of the frame was based on the frieze section of the eighteenth century French frame on Largillierre’s Crown Prince Frederick Augustus in the collection of the NGV.
The frame is described as: “Hand made and water gilded reproduction of French Empire Neoclassical Revival frame with ornamental mouldings cast in plaster of Paris: leaf, Berainesque frieze, beading, ribbon and cord. (Original pattern illustrated on Manet’s House at Rueil)”.

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Edouard Manet

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