Spanish Dancers by Édouard Manet, 1879, oil on canvas, The Hispanic Society of America (NYC)

… Olé indeed! :)

loquaciousconnoisseur

(via rose-publique)

Boy in Flowers (Jacques Hoschede) by Edouard Manet, 1876, oil on canvas, 60 x 97 cm, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

From the period praised by Mallarmé in “The Impressionists and Edouard Manet”.

Watch a very similar kid here… :)

Interior at Arcachon by Edouard Manet, 1871, oil on canvas,39x54cm, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Léon might as well be blowing soap bubbles (especially as he was the model for the 1867 picture…) :)

via erinaa

(Source: rose-publique)

Les Bulles de savon by Edouard Manet, 1867, oil on canvas, 100,5 × 81,4 cm, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon

La Lecture (Suzanne Leenhoff /Mme Manet/ and her “brother” Léon Coella) by Edouard Manet, 1848-1883, oil on canvas, 60.5 x 73.5 cm, Paris, Musée d’Orsay

Portrait de Madame Manet sur un canapé bleu by Edouard Manet, 1874, pastel on brown paper applied on canvas, 49 x 60 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Madame Manet au piano by Edouard Manet, 1867-1868, 38 x 46.5 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

The most recognizable female model of the 19th century, Victorine Meurent, the model for Manet’s “Olympia” (1863) and “Le dejeuner sur l’herbe” (The Luncheon on the Grass 1862-3), was born in Paris in 1844, into a working class family. Her father was an engraver (or patinator of bronzes), her mother ran a laundry shop (or was a milliner). Supposedly she met Manet, rich and aristocratic artist by then, sometime in 1860s in the studio of Thomas Couture, where she posed and probably studied painting. She had been Manet’s favorite model for at least a decade. His paintings of Meurent would become the world most famous ones.

Meurent also sat for Puvis de Chavannes, Alfred Stevens (it is said they were lovers), Edgar Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, she was a talented painter herself and even exhibited her self-portrait at the Salon in 1876, the same year that Manet’s canvases were rejected. Victorine took evening classes at the Academie Julian. She also played violin and guitar and sang in cafes.

Meurent was a petite woman with red hair, and had a nickname La Glue and la Crevette - shrimp. Many scholars considered her as a prostitute and an alcoholic (when she was in her 40s, Norbert Goeneutte painted her as an alcoholic guitar palyer “La femme au singe” 1890), and Manet’s lover, who drowned herself in drinking and died young. Yet, as it was discovered in the late 20th century, she lived till the age of 83 with a female companion, probably lover, while Manet died at the age of 51 from the complications associated with syphilis he had suffered from.

Victorine became an accomplished artist as her canvases were exhibited at the Salon six times. She became the member of the Société des Artistes Français in 1903.
In 1870s she traveled to United States and returned to Paris in 1875. 

Manet: Street Singer, ca. 1862, oil on canvas, 171.1 x 105.8 cm, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts

Manet: Young Lady in 1866 (Woman with a Parrot), 1866, oil on canvas, 185.1 x 128.6 cm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Manet: The Railway, 1873, oil on canvas, 93.3 x 111.5 cm, Washington, National Gallery of Art

(Source: artistsandart.org)

Mademoiselle V… in the Costume of an Espada by Édouard Manet, 1862, oil on canvas, 165.1 x 127.6 cm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lola de Valence by Édouard Manet, 1862, oil on canvas, 123 x 92 cm, Paris, Musée d’Orsay