The photograph above was taken by Félix-Jacques Antoine Moulin in 1852 and is in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF). Art historian Beatrice Farwell believes the woman in the photo is Manet’s model, Victorine Meurent. Here’s another of Moulin’s photos of the woman Farwell believes is Meurent: In Farwell’s 1981 dissertation Manet and the Nude, a Study in […]
Manet inspires me for many reasons, but I’ll focus on just one in this love letter. Almost as soon as Manet started to paint, people criticized his choice of subjects, use of color, composition, or style of painting. One of his first critics was his teacher, Thomas Couture, who objected to Manet’s desire to portray […]
Today I’m thinking of the black necklaces Manet often painted women wearing. Maybe many women did wear chokers. But I think Manet painted black ribbon necklaces in so many of his portraits because the strip of black against skin added something essential to his compositions—and just because he liked the way it looked. He made black chokers […]
Paris Red: A Novel by Maureen Gibbon 