Existing comment:
Ragpicker
c. 1865-1869
Edouard Manet
--
Edouard Manet's Ragpicker:
The Norton Simon Museum and the National Gallery of Art have recently entered into a long-term arrangement whereby selected masterpieces from each collection will be lent to the other institution to hang temporarily with its permanent collection.
Norton Simon (1907-1993), one of the great collectors of his age, established the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena in 1975 to allow public access to his art treasures. Nineteenth-century European painting is one of the major strengths of the collection, with more than 130 works that span the entire century. Among the most impressive of these is Ragpicker by Edouard Manet, which was purchased by Simon in 1968.
The Norton Simon's Ragpicker and the National Gallery's Old Musician and Tragic Actor are from a series of monumental figural compositions that Manet painted in the 1860s, inspired by the old masters, particularly seventeenth-century Spanish painter Diego Valazquez. Manet's debt to Valazquez is evident in the compositions of Ragpicker and Tragic Actor, with nearly life-sized figured placed against an ambiguous backdrop, giving the works an austere, theatrical appearance. The influence of Valazquez can also be recognized in the relatively comber palette and vibrant brushwork of all three paintings. Even the humble subject matter is rooted in the traditions of seventeenth-century art, which Manet adapted to create direct and unsentimental images of people on the margins of society. |