The Artist – 1875 Édouard Manet (1832-1883)

Description of Eduard Manet’s painting The Artist

The full-length portrait of an unusual man is an atypical work for Manet, executed in an uncharacteristically realistic manner, unique in its own way. The two artists, Manet and Marcellin Debutin, met one day at the New Athens café. They formed a true friendship. Marcellin painted a portrait of Manet in the dry needle technique, and Manet painted his friend, immortalizing his somewhat strange appearance.

In Manet’s painting we see a tall man dressed in a gray, long, visibly worn coat in places. A black felt hat casually covers his black, lush, curly hair, and his face is framed by a somewhat ungroomed beard. But all this is just the scenery, unimportant details of the appearance, indicating only a low material income of the free artist.

The main thing in the portrait, as it should be, swarthy face and black, sad eyes, looking tiredly from under the heavy lids. Underneath the external slovenliness you can see a true aristocrat, a man of high spiritual status, cultured and educated. Manet emphasizes this with an unexpectedly snow-white scarf around the artist’s neck. Another bright, eye-catching accent is the hands. And here is a large, white dog in the bright light on a rather gloomy and dark background, obviously, carries an additional semantic load, understandable only to the author.

Marcellin Debutin lived for some time in Florence, inherited a huge castle, was hospitable and generous. He was fond of poetry, composed poetic dramas, with pleasure and professionally made magnificent copies of paintings by famous artists. Somehow, unbeknownst to himself, he went bankrupt, came to Paris, occupied the former plumber’s workshop, and settled in the horrible, uninhabitable conditions of a dirty workers’ barrack.

Loading himself like a pack animal, he worked hard, but for a pittance. He lived like a beggar. It was during this time that the two artists met.