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Portrait of Madame Brunet

Creator

French Artist · 1832–1883

Painter

>History painting, what a joke! There is only one authentic thing: to paint what you see. > >--Édouard Manet Described by his contemporaries as a debonair, charismatic, and sociable man, Manet's artistic portrayal of the kaleidoscopic experience of modern Paris can be seen as a reflection of his personality and interests. For much of his career, Manet's urban subjects and seemingly detached approa

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Date: about 1861–1863, reworked by 1867
Medium: Oil on canvas
Culture: French
Department: Paintings
Institution: Getty Museum
Object ID: 7b80ff8c-ba2f-4b40-a267-9408d9273f15

From the Getty Museum record

This portrait's bold brushwork, stark contrasts of light and dark, and frank presentation of the sitter reflect Manet's early passion for seventeenth-century Spanish painting. Madame Brunet, the wife of a friend, rejected the painting on account of its perceived ugliness, however, and the artist retained it in his studio. He eventually cut off the bottom portion of the canvas, reducing it to a three-quarter-length portrait, and displayed it in his one-man exhibition in Paris in 1867—a show of independence opposite the World's Fair, where more polished examples of society portraiture, like James Tissot's [*Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon*]( https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/239595/jacques-joseph-tissot-portrait-of-the-marquise-de-miramon-nee-therese-feuillant-french-1866/) (also in the Getty's collection), could be seen.

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