Detail of The Kearsage at Boulogne by Manet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, August 2010

Artist: Édouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris)

Title: The "Kearsarge" at Boulogne

Date: 1864

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 32 1/8 x 39 3/8 in. (81.6 x
100 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Partial and Promised Gift of Peter H. B. Frelinghuysen, and Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Bernhard Gift, by exchange, Gifts of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rodgers and Joanne Toor Cummings, by exchange, and Drue Heinz Trust, The Dillon Fund, The Vincent Astor Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Henry R. Kravis, The Charles Engelhard Foundation, and Florence and Herbert Irving Gifts, 1999

Accession Number: 1999.442


Gallery Label:

During the Civil War, a corvette of the United States Navy, the Kearsarge, attacked and sank a Confederate vessel near the French coast in June 1864. The incident received much public attention in Europe and was the subject of Manet's first painting of a current event, "The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama" (Philadelphia Museum of Art). Manet seems not to have witnessed the battle at sea, but that July, when he was in Boulogne, he made a point of visiting the victorious ship at anchor. While there he executed a watercolor (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon) on which this painting was probably based.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/europe...