''The Reading'' is an oil painting by French painter

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 ...

circa Circa is a word of Latin origin meaning 'approximately'. Circa or CIRCA may also refer to: * CIRCA (art platform), art platform based in London * Circa (band), a progressive rock supergroup * Circa (company), an American skateboard footwear com ...

1865 - 1873.

History

The painting was first exhibited in 1880 in one of the regular solo exhibitions mounted by Manet in his workshop. The picture was also part of the great posthumous exhibition of Manet's work in 1884, a year after his death. The work first belonged to the private collection of

Winnaretta Singer Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac (8 January 186526 November 1943) was an American-born heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune. She used this to fund a wide range of causes, notably a musical salon where her protégés includ ...

, Princess Edmond de Polignac, where it remained until 1944, after the death of the Princess. It was offered as a gift to the French State and deposited in the Musée du Louvre. In 1947, it was transferred to the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, a showroom located in the

Jardin des Tuileries The Tuileries Garden (french: Jardin des Tuileries, ) is a public garden located between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. Created by Catherine de' Medici as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in ...

and which belongs to the Louvre. It remained there until 1986, when, with the creation of the Musée d'Orsay, it was brought to this museum, like the rest of the collection of Impressionist paintings in the Louvre. It can currently be seen in the

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...

, in room 31 of level 5.

Analysis

The painting depicts the artist's wife, Suzanne Manet (born Suzanne Leenhoff), seated, and their son, Leon, standing and reading a book. Leon was a recurrent model for Manet who portrayed him in several pictures, such as ''The Lunch'', ''The

Boy Carrying a Sword ''Boy Carrying a Sword'' is an 1861 oil painting by the French artist Édouard Manet and is now displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The work depicts a small boy costumed as a page of the Spanish court of the seventeenth centu ...

'' and ''The Bubbles of Soap''. In this work the white woman's dress dominates, and the sofa and curtains are treated with broad strokes of high brightness, in counterpoint to the dark tone of the belt and collar. According to

Peter H. Feist Peter Heinz Feist (most often Peter H. Feist) (29 July 1928 – 26 July 2015) was a German art historian. Life Feist was born in 1928 in Warnsdorf in northern Bohemia, where he grew up. His father Georg H. Feist was a surgeon and in 1926 he ...

, in this painting "Manet reacts more sensitive than usual, and looks especially to shades of white that are offered to his eyes".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reading, The Paintings by Édouard Manet Paintings in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay 1860s paintings Books in art