Édouard Manet
‘Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère’ (first version, 1881)
Manet’s first ‘Bar aux Folies-Bergère’ at Sotheby’s On June 24th 2015, Sotheby’s will feature the first version of ‘Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère’ (1881) by Édouard Manet, estimated at £15-20 million / $23-30.7 million / €21-28 million.]]>
June 3, 2015, source: Sotheby’s
Manet turned to the theme of bars and café-concerts in the late 1870s as inspiration for his paintings, which reached a climax in the subject depicted in ‘Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère’. His celebrated large-scale oil of the same title, exhibited at the Salon of 1882 and now in the collection of the Courtauld Gallery, London, is considered the crowning achievement of Manet’s career.
While the two related paintings share the same subject and a similar composition, the artist’s stylistic approach to painting them differed significantly. Unlike the painting in the Courtauld, this smaller, earlier painting (47 by 56cm) displays a remarkable vivacity and immediacy in the artist’s depiction of his subject, and is executed with quick, spontaneous brushstrokes that remained barely altered as Manet developed the composition.
In the mid-1980s X-ray-based research revealed further differences in approach and techniques employed. Interestingly, beneath the surface of the Courtauld painting lies a composition that resembles the earlier painting much more closely. Manet initially transferred the composition of the earlier work to the larger canvas, and over a longer period of time made numerous changes that led to the final image: he enlarged the figure of the barmaid and depicted her in the centre of the composition frontally, replacing her clasped arms with straight ones and moving the barmaid’s reflected image to a less logical position on the right, whereas the image of her male companion was moved further up into the top right corner. In the process Manet substituted the immediacy of the earlier painting – in which reality is transcribed with a wonderful vibrancy and freedom – for a composition in which the reflections of the two figures become picturesque but implausible.
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