''La Négresse'' is an 1862 oil on canvas painting by

Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Born ...

, now in the

Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli The Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli is an art gallery in Turin, Italy. It opened in 2002 on the top floor of the Lingotto complex (the headquarters of the Italian auto giant Fiat founded in 1899 by Giovanni Agnelli), where a "scrigno" or 450 ...

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...

. The name of the model for the work is unknown; she may be Laure, the black woman holding a bunch of flowers in the same artist's ''

Olympia The name Olympia may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Olympia'' (1938 film), by Leni Riefenstahl, documenting the Berlin-hosted Olympic Games * ''Olympia'' (1998 film), about a Mexican soap opera star who pursues a career as an athlet ...

''. The work is still linked with the "black beauties of Baudelaire". in reference to his mistress Jeanne Duval, although Duval was

mixed-race Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-ethn ...

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.. ''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 Mór Lipót Herzog (1869-1934) was a Jewish Hungarian art collector, banker, and large estate owner whose art collection is the object of Holocaust-related restitution claims. Life Herzog, known as Baron Herzog, was born in 1869 in Budapest an ...

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

, from whom it was looted by Nazi troops. The work passed through Berlin and

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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.

References

Bibliography

* * 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. (). * {{DEFAULTSORT:Négresse, La Portraits by Édouard Manet 1862 paintings Portraits of women Paintings in the collection of the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli Black people in art

See also

References

Bibliography