The conservatory

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The conservatory: Edouard Manet

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

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Work Overview: The conservatory
Edouard Manet
Original Title: Dans la serre
Date: 1879; Paris, France *
Style: Impressionism
Genre: portrait
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 115 x 150 cm
Location: Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

In the Conservatory (French: Dans la serre) is an 1879 oil painting by Édouard Manet in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. The setting is a conservatory at 70 Rue d'Amsterdam (fr) in Paris, then owned by painter Otto Rosen and which Manet used as a studio for nine months in 1878 and 1879.[1] At first glance, we see a double portrait of a fashionable and attractive couple of some social rank. They are Manet's friends, the Guillemets, who owned a clothing shop. Their married status is conveyed by their rings, and the proximity of their hands is the nearest hint of intimacy. The woman becomes the focus of the portrait, however, being more prominently placed and colourfully dressed. Their physical separation—with the husband Jules slouching in dark clothing behind the bench—and their lack of engagement with the viewer create a sense of detachment, which has been the primary theme in modern criticism of the work.[2]

The painting was exhibited in the 1879 Paris Salon and was regarded as surprisingly conservative for Manet. Jules-Antoine Castagnary wrote, with tongue in cheek, "But what is this? Face and hands more carefully drawn than usual: is Manet making concessions to the public?"[3]—and said it portrayed "the elegance of fashionable life".[1] Yet the portrait is not entirely conventional—the sense of dislocation carries to the background. Joris-Karl Huysmans called the subjects "marvelously detached from the envelope of green surrounding them".[4] The interplay of lines formally defines the work. The woman has an erect posture echoed by the vertical slats of the bench, and the man, though leaning forward, does not break that vertical. The bench continues off the right side, reinforcing the horizontal and the separation of foreground and background. The diagonal pleats on the woman's dress provide some relief from the linearity of the composition.

Jean-Baptiste Faure bought In the Conservatory from Manet, along with three other paintings, for the "paltry sum" of 11,000 francs.[5]

In 1896 In the Conservatory was bought by the Deutsche Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The Nationalgalerie thus was the first museum worldwide that purchased a picture of Manet.[6]

In 1945 by the end of the Second World War In the Conservatory was among the objects evacuated from the German National Gallery and the Berlin State Museums and put for safekeeping in a mine in Merkers. After the war the picture was discovered and secured by the Monuments Men. Its salvage was documented in several photographs which show soldiers from the U.S. Army posing with Manet’s painting in the mine in Merkers. These photographs have gained iconographic status over the years and are often falsely[7] used as an illustration of Nazi looted art in prestigious publications like the Deutsche Welle,[8] The Washington Post,[9] The New York Times[10] and even in academic papers.

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In the Conservatory, 1879 is one of the most dehghtfully fresh of all Manet's works. It depicts a scene from Paris society life at the time when Alphonse Daudet was pubhshing his novels. (Could this not be a scene from Fromont jeune et Risler aine?) The artist has succeeded perfectly in this conversation piece, in which the woman is like a dainty flower bright with the first bloom of youth, while the figure beside her, some years older than she, has the handsome worldliness of a man about town. One must admire the way Manet has contrasted the rose tints of the flesh with the ivory tones of the collar and hat worn by Mme Guillemet.

For Manet, his intimate life was also a subject for painting. Following in his wake, the other Impressionists would, each in their turn, cross the threshold of private life, an area of art in which the Japanese were undisputed masters. There is no voyeurism in Manet. His subject is the female body wholly focused on itself, and in depicting it, he extended the realm of his art. Here, stripped of artifice, a woman meditates conquest as she stoops to rinse. Society woman is caught pre-society. But though the subject, in Manet, no longer had the same importance, his sensuality transpires as strongly as his affection. "Drawing is not form," he said, "but the way forms are seen", and "Even with nature, composition is required". These maxims specify Manet's divergence from the Impressionist doctrine of fidelity to nature. They also distinguish him from Edgar Degas, who, some ten years later, began his astonishing series of women washing, returning to the theme of the bathtub in sophisticated overhead and japoniste perspectives.

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In all, 245,694 visitors saw this year's major summer show 'Impressionism – Expressionism', which closed yesterday at the Alte Nationalgalerie. 'ImEx' now goes down as the exhibition with the highest visitor numbers in the gallery's history.

Over the 109 days open to the public, a total of 2500 group and 600 school tours were held and some 21,000 VIP tickets sold. Approximately 20,000 exhibition catalogues were sold in the museum gift shop alone. During the exhibition's 17-week run, around 65,000 people (26 percent of all visitors) took advantage of the offer of an audio guide, including a kids' audio guide. 'ImEx' attracted some 15,000 visitors in the last four days alone, with queues forming round the building.

Udo Kittelmann, director of the Nationalgalerie (of which the Alte Nationalgalerie is part), said he was 'Very pleased ... that the prized works of Impressionism and Expressionism in the Nationalgalerie's collection, joined by several high-profile loans, were placed in direct interplay with one another here for the first time.' He went on to say: 'The overwhelming international response and broad public appeal, including from art experts, means we can count this as a great success for the gallery and the Nationalgalerie's collection as a whole.' Philipp Demandt, director of the Alte Nationalgalerie, added: 'The overwhelming success of ImEx shows the great potential inherent in the Nationalgalerie's own collections that is waiting to be tapped if one is prepared to find new and surprising angles from which to look at them.'

The Nationalgalerie (initially housed entirely in the Alte Nationalgalerie) was one of the first art museums in the world to acquire Impressionist paintings for its collection, in 1896. In 1919, just two decades later, a large number of Expressionist works swelled its collection. The Alte Nationalgalerie's show extensively traced, for the first time, the similarities and differences between the two art movements, which contemporary critics were quick to compare with each another in their scorn. Some 160 masterpieces, including by Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde and Franz Marc, were on view over the entire middle floor of the Alte Nationalgalerie, arranged according to common themes. More than half of the works on display came from the Nationalgalerie's own collection and were enriched by high-profile works on loan from international museums.

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