Woman Reading

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Woman Reading: Edouard Manet

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Edouard Manet Oil Painting - Woman Reading

Keywords: Woman, Reading

Work Overview: Woman Reading
Edouard Manet
Original Title: Le journal illustre
Date: c.1879; Paris, France *
Style: Impressionism
Genre: genre painting
Oil on canvas
24 1/16 x 19 7/8 in. (61.2 x 50.7 cm)
Location: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, US

Around 1870 Edouard Manet adopted the blonde palette favored by the Impressionist circle, at the same time selectively transmuting his own brand of summary handling into a still more immediate, rapid-fire manner. Woman Reading is one of several paintings from this phase of his career, during which he portrayed Parisian drinking and theatrical venues. The sketchiest of the series, this canvas also appears to be the simplest. However, looks can be deceiving.

Manet here depicted a fashionably dressed young woman sitting in a café or brasserie—presumably outside, for she remains bundled up. She holds an illustrated journal, one of the periodicals provided for the establishment’s clientele. But it is not clear that she is reading; she might be using the large pages to screen surreptitious looks coming from her right. In any event, there seems to be a hint of avidity in her expression. The landscape behind her, rendered in quick dabs of green, blue, and red, might be an adjacent garden; then again it could be a decorative mural, as is suggested by the waterfall-like passage of blue over her left shoulder.

In Woman Reading, Manet seems to have reveled in the commercialized pleasures and studied self-presentations that animated Paris. Following his lead, we delight in the smeary yet elegant gloved hands; the lightly applied, "whipped" strokes of the collar; and the teasing evocation of the journal’s cover illustration, which hovers on the brink of legibility. Far from being incidental, such virtuosic, playfully ambiguous passages embody Manet’s response to the Impressionism practiced by his younger colleagues. Shaped by his urbane pictorial intelligence, this active surface, like the image as a whole, celebrates the elusive, equivocal character of modern representation.

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Edouard Manet

Work Overview