Self-Portrait with Palette

Manet looks straight at us in a top hat and smart jacket, brush raised, palette in hand. It is the only time he painted himself as a painter, and he did it late, in the very year his stepson later linked to the start of his fatal illness.

The story behind the painting

Manet, who had never painted a self-portrait, made two around 1878 to 1879: this one and the full-length Self-Portrait with Cap. Wikipedia dates this canvas 1878 to 1879, while Wikidata gives 1879. The dating goes back to Manet's friend Théodore Duret, who asked Manet's stepson Léon Leenhoff about it after the painter's death. X-rays show that Manet painted over a profile portrait of his wife, Suzanne, posed much as in Madame Manet at the Piano. Juliet Wilson-Bareau offers a moving explanation: Leenhoff told the biographer Adolphe Tabarant that Manet fell ill with syphilis in 1879, and facing death, he may have felt a need to come to terms with himself.

What to look for

The canvas, 83 by 67 cm, shows Manet at half length against a dark background. He wears a black top hat, a brown jacket, a white collar and a black silk tie fixed with a pin. In his right hand, only loosely sketched, he holds a long brush tipped with red paint. In his left he holds a palette with about three more brushes. Light falls from the left, shading the right half of his face and the area beneath his arm. His body turns slightly, and his gaze is fixed on us. Nothing else is shown: no studio, no canvas, no subject. Manet leaves all of that to our imagination.

Meaning and intent

The pose comes from Velázquez's self-portrait in Las Meninas, where the Spanish painter stands with brush and palette. But Velázquez stands in the background behind the princess and her servants, while Manet makes himself the centre. Painters did not work in fine clothes, which paint would ruin. Like Velázquez in his courtly dress, Manet dressed to show who he was: a stylish, successful Parisian, the painter of modern life in Baudelaire's sense. The unfinished painting hand has drawn many readings. Victor Stoichiţă sees the act of painting turning back on itself, and Françoise Cachin sees a way to focus light and attention. Suzanne Manet, however, simply called both self-portraits sketches.

Legacy

The painting was not sold in Manet's lifetime or in the 1884 estate sale. After his death Léon Leenhoff hung both self-portraits on either side of Manet's Faure as Hamlet, though Wilson-Bareau notes Manet probably never intended that. In 1899 the dealer Hermann Paechter bought both pictures, and a long series of collectors followed. Opinions shifted over time. In 1926 Étienne Moreau-Nélaton called it spoiled by a certain coldness, while Theodore Reff in 1982 stressed how meaningful it was that Manet turned to self-portraiture at the height of his career. The companion Self-Portrait with Cap even helped inspire Edvard Munch's full-length portraits through the collector Max Linde.

Did you know?

One of only two self-portraits by Manet, and the only one showing him as a painter.
Wikipedia dates it 1878-1879; Wikidata gives 1879.
Painted over a profile portrait of his wife Suzanne.
The pose recalls Velázquez in Las Meninas.

Wikipedia · Wikidata