Edouard Manet (1832-1883)

Etude d'arbres

Details

Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
Etude d'arbres
signed with initials lower right 'E.M.'
oil on canvas
21 1/8 x 11 3/8in. (53.6 x 28.4cm.)
Painted in 1859

Provenance

Estate of the artist; sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Feb. 4-5, 1884, lot 68
M. de la Narde, Paris
A.M.L. Devillez, Brussels
M. Leten, Ghent

Literature

E. Moreau-Nelaton, Manet, raconté par lui-même, Paris, 1926, vol. II, no. 24
P. Jamot and G. Wildenstein, Manet, Paris, 1932, vol. II, no. 76 (illustrated, p. 218, pl. 466)
A. Tabarant, Manet et ses oeuvres, Paris, 1947, p. 27, no. 25
S. Orienti, The Complete Paintings of Manet, New York, 1967, no. 18 M. Bodelson, "Early Impressionist Sales, 1874-1894," The Burlington Magazine, June, 1968, no. 68 (illustrated, p. 344)
D. Rouart and D. Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, Catalogue raisonné, Lausanne, 1975, vol. I, no. 24 (illustrated, p. 43)

Exhibited

Ghent, Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Peinture dans les Collections Gantoises, March-May, 1953, no. 106

Lot Essay

The present painting is a study for Manet's masterpiece Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (coll. Musée d'Orsay, Paris), painted in the same year. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe is essentially an assemblage of various individual paintings: a still life, four separate portraits, and a landscape. Manet made several studies for the landscape which provides the backdrop for Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and were done from sketches made at Gennevilliers and the Ile de Saint-Ouen where the artist was on holiday.