Portrait of Mademoiselle Klaus Eduard Manet will remain in England

After an 8-month fundraising campaign, the Ashmolean Museum was able to acquire a painting of Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus by Edward Manet for £ 7,830,000 and save it, thereby, in the United Kingdom.

Eduard Manet - Portrait of Mademoiselle Klaus

The painting was purchased by a foreign buyer in 2011 for $ 28.35 million. However, on the advice of the Committee on the Export of Works of Art, it was rated as having outstanding cultural significance. The export of the painting was temporarily banned, until August 7, 2012, by Minister of Culture Ed Vaizey.

The purchase of a painting for the Museum at 27% of its market value was funded by the state, the rest was private donations, grants from art funds, trusts, and commercial companies from around the world. As the director of the Museum, Dr. Christopher Brown, noted, this is the most significant acquisition in Ashmole’s history.

Manet was one of the greatest artists of the 19th century. His work was often shocking, but always admired the public. His fame grew rapidly, and by the beginning of the 20th century, paintings belonging to the artist’s brush were acquired by the largest museums in the world. Mane’s paintings are very few in private collections. Almost all the famous works of the master are now in France, in England they are present in the collections of the National Gallery and the Courto Institute in London. The appearance of the “Portrait of Mademoiselle Klaus” in the Ashmolean Museum’s collection, in addition to the already rich collection of Pissarro’s works, makes the Museum a leading world center for the study of the works of impressionists and post-impressionists.

Depicted in the portrait, Fanny Claus (1846-77) was a close friend of Manet’s wife, Suzanne Leenhof. (Suzanne Leenhoff). The violinist, a member of the first female string quartet, Fanny was a member of a close-knit group of friends who sometimes acted as models for many artists. She married the artist Pierre Prince (1838-1913), a friend of Manet, and in 1869 died of tuberculosis at the age of 30.

"Portrait of Mademoiselle Klaus" will be exhibited for some time in the museum, after which, in 2013, will go on a tour of the UK.

Anna Sidorova