La Négresse (Manet) Explained

La Négresse
Year:	1862
Medium:	oil on canvas
Height Metric:	61
Width Metric:	50
City:	Turin

La Négresse is an 1862 oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet, now in the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli in Turin.

The name of the model for the work is Laure, the black woman holding a bunch of flowers in the same artist's Olympia.^[1] The work is still linked with the "black beauties of Baudelaire"^[2] in reference to his mistress Jeanne Duval, although Duval was mixed-race rather than black. Baudelaire and Manet became close friends, during which time he produced a portrait of Duval in 1862, entitled Baudelaire's Mistress. The poet was often in the painter's studio.^[3]

La Négresse is mentioned in Manet's posthumous inventory in 1883 under number 46 and was owned by Éva Gonzalès-Guérard, then Auguste Pellerin, then Alexandre Louis Philippe Berthier, prince of Wagram. In 1913 it belonged to Baron Herzog in Budapest, from whom it was looted by Nazi troops.^[4] The work passed through Berlin and Honolulu between 1933 and 1959, before entering its present home. It appeared in volume 1 of the 1975 Rouart-Wilderstein catalogue under the reference number RW 68.

See also

• List of paintings by Édouard Manet
• 1862 in art

References

1. News: French masterpieces renamed after black subjects in new exhibition. Agence France-Presse. The Guardian . March 26, 2019. www.theguardian.com.
2. .
3. .
4. Web site: Heirs of Jewish art collector sue over looted 'Nazi' art. July 29, 2010. www.telegraph.co.uk.

Bibliography

• Book: Cachin . Françoise . Moffett . Charles S. . Bareau . Juliet Wilson . Manet, 1832-1883 : Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 22 avril-1er août 1983, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10 septembre-27 novembre 1983. . Ministère de la Culture . [Paris] . 1983 . 2-7118-0230-2 . 9663346 . fr.
• Adolphe Tabarant, Manet et ses œuvres, Paris, Gallimard, 1947, 600 p.
• Adolphe Tabarant, Les Manet de la collection Havemeyer : La Renaissance de l'art français, Paris, 1930, XIII edition
• Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, Manet raconté par lui-même, vol. 2, t. I and II, Paris, Henri Laurens, 1926.
• Collectif RMN (Stéphane Guégan, Laurence des Cars, Simone Kelly, Nancy Locke, Helen Burnham, Louis-Antoine Prat – contributors; interview with Philippe Sollers), Manet inventeur du moderne, Paris, 2011, 297 p. .
• Book: Guégan . Stéphane . Des Cars . Laurence . Kelly . Simon R.. Manet : inventeur du moderne : [exposition, Paris, Musée d'Orsay, 5 avril - 3 juillet 2011 | publication-place=Paris | date=2011 | isbn=978-2-07-013323-9 | oclc=793112848 | language=fr ].