| Le Suicidé | |
| Artist: | Édouard Manet |
| Year: | – |
| Medium: | Oil on canvas |
| Subject: | Suicide |
| Height Metric: | 38 |
| Width Metric: | 46 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| Imperial Unit: | in |
| Museum: | Foundation E.G. Bührle |
| City: | Zurich |
French: Le Suicidé is a small oil painting by Édouard Manet completed between 1877 and 1881. The painting has been little studied within Manet's oeuvre, as art historians have had difficulty finding a place for the work within the development of Manet's art.[1]
The pictorial content of the painting is limited to a man who appears to have just shot himself—still holding the gun while slouched on a bed—and a few pieces of furniture. Manet has removed the trappings of earlier depictions of suicide, and provided next to no narrative content or "moralizing tendency".[2] Ulrike Ilg associates the painting with the realism of Gustave Courbet, noting that Courbet also used a depiction of death in his Burial at Ornans (1849–50), a work that Courbet later described as the beginning of his new artistic approach.
The realism of French: Le Suicidé has fueled speculation that it depicts an actual suicide, but the subject, if any, is not known.[3] Speculation has concerned an assistant of Manet who committed suicide in Manet's studio more than a decade earlier. Another suicide proposed to be connected with the painting was that of an artist whom Émile Zola had written about in 1866.[1]
Manet's approach to this depiction may represent his continuing desire to break from academic tradition, in which a depiction of suicide could only fit within the genre of history painting—where death and suicide would be placed within a narrative associated with sacrifice, idealism, or heroism. Examples in the French language include The Death of Socrates (1787) by Jacques-Louis David, which depicts Socrates' choice to kill himself by hemlock rather than go into exile. There is no such grand statement underlying Manet's painting. The artist has not presented a clear time, place, or protagonist. The painting is plainly constructed rather than carefully styled. This departure from tradition would have been controversial with contemporary viewers.[4]