Portrait of Madame Brunet by Manet in the Getty Center, June 2016

Title: Portrait of Madame Brunet

Artist/Maker: Édouard Manet (French, 1832 - 1883)

Culture: French

Place: France (Place created)

Date: about 1861 -1863, reworked by 1867

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 132.4 × 100 cm (52 1/8 × 39 3/8 in.)

Signed: Signed lower center left, "Manet"

Alternate Titles: Young Woman in 1860 (Alternate Title)
Portrait of Mme Brunet (Published Title)

Department: Paintings

Classification: Paintings

Object Type: Painting

Object Number: 2011.53


This portrait's bold brushwork, stark contrasts of light and dark, and frank presentation of the sitter reflect Manet's early passion for seventeenth-century Spanish painting. Madame Brunet, the wife of a friend, rejected the painting on account of its perceived ugliness however, and the artist retained it in his studio. He eventually cut off the bottom portion of the canvas, reducing it to a three-quarter-length portrait, and displayed it in his one-man exhibition in Paris in 1867--a show of independence opposite the World's Fair, where more polished examples of society portraiture, like James Tissot's Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon (also in the Museum's collection), could be seen.


Text from: www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/258736/edouard-manet-portrait-of-madame-brunet-french-about-1861-1863-reworked-by-1867