ÉDOUARD MANET | Jeune femme decolletté

Estate of the artist (and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 4 & 5, 1884, lot 118)
Madame de Koenigswarter, Paris
Sale: Christie's, New York, November 15, 1990, lot 116
Gordon Getty, San Francisco (acquired at the above sale and sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 8, 2007, lot 160)
Acquired at the above sale

Théodore Duret, Histoire d'Édouard Manet et de son oeuvre, Paris, 1902, no. 57
Etienne Moreau-Nelaton, Manet raconté par lui-meme, Paris, 1926, no. 420
Paul Jamot, Georges Wildenstein & Marie-Louise Bataille, Manet, Paris, 1932, no. 534
Adolphe Tabarant, Manet et ses oeuvres, Paris, 1947, no. 515, illustrated p. 430
Merete Bodelson, "Early Impressionists Sales, 1874-1894," in Burlington Magazine, June 1968, no. 118, illustrated p. 343
Denis Rouart & Sandra Orienti, Tout l'oeuvre peint d'Édouard Manet, Paris, 1970, no. 373
Denis Rouart & Daniel Wildenstein, Édouard Manet, Catalogue raisonné, vol. II, Geneva, 1975, no. 86, illustrated p. 34

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Édouard Manet's fascination with the female portrait is clearly recorded in the eighty-nine pastels within his oeuvre. Jeune femme decolletté is a typical subject for a Manet pastel, but unique in the pastel’s application, which creates a soft almost abstract atmosphere that is effective as a compliment to the delicate modeling of the sitter’s bust and countenance. Françoise Cachin writes on Manet’s use of the pastel medium, “Pastel allowed [Manet] a freshness, a gay palette, a powdery texture more flattering to the face and introducing a kind of makeup into the technique itself. The women who posed for him, whether of the monde or demi-monde—Mme Guillemet, Mme Michel Lévy, Valtesse de la Bigne, Irma Brunner, and Méry Laurent, then the most frequent subjects—were delighted with their likenesses” (Françoise Cachin, “La Viennoise Portrait of Irma Brunner,” in Manet 1832-1883, New York, 1983, p. 493).

As in many of Manet’s greatest works, the artist blurs the distinctions between the illusion of his technique and the pure visual delight of manipulated medium in Jeune femme decolletté. Most likely inspired by Degas’ pastels, Manet employed the medium to further explore the broad expanses of color and the suppression of transitional tones in his portraits (see fig. 1).

Leah Lehmbeck notes the effect of Manet’s pastel profiles and portraits, “Boldly executed and only flirting with finish, they impressed the critics who had often had trouble with these same qualities in his paintings. Indeed, after complaining of Manet’s failings in his paintings, Paul Sebillot remarked on the pastels, "but the same faults, because of the greater freedom of the medium, appear less shocking. They are among the most admired works in the present exhibition and they deserve to be" (Leah Lehmbeck, “L’Ésprit de l’atelier: Manet’s Late Portraits of Women, 1878-1883," in Manet: Portraying Life, London, 2012, p. 55).