The Musée d'Orsay enriches its vast collection of Edouard Manet. The establishment announced Wednesday June 3 having acquired by preemption during an Internet sale of Christie's a painting of youth of the painter. Entitled Head of a Young Man, it was produced from a self-portrait by Filippino Lippi. The hammer price of the work at the sale was 95,000 euros.
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Orsay, a major Parisian museum of modern and impressionist art (19th and early 20th centuries), now conserves 30 paintings by Manet (not counting pastels and works on paper), including the famous Olympia and Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe . “The museum has the largest collection in the world. Manet is a key artist around which Orsay revolves. A founding figure who invented the very concept of modern art from the 1860s, " Laurence des Cars, president of the Musée d'Orsay public establishment (which also includes the Musée de l ' Orangery).
A painting from its beginnings
This Young Man's Head , from the painting kept at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, dates from its very beginnings. He painted it at 21 years old. “It's a type of Manet work that we didn't have at all. We see there the report of the young painter to the old master. A man who visits museums, he shows a report made both of homage and transgression " in his copy. "The picture is disturbing, the touch firm, determined, energetic," said Laurence des Cars.
Manet reproduced the self-portrait of Filippino Lippi (right), an Italian painter of the 15th century. All rights reserved / Musée d'Orsay / Galerie Uffizi
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At that time Édouard Manet would have destroyed or given away his early works, the execution of which hardly satisfied him. We know about ten copies of the artist from the masters of Italy, Spain and the North. Manet was able to make them at the Louvre during his training with the painter Thomas Couture, or during his travels, when in particular he stayed in Florence in 1853 and 1857.
The picture is disturbing, the touch firm, determined, energetic
Laurence des Cars, President of the Public Establishment of the Musée d'OrsayHis interest in Lippi (1457-1504), painter of the Quattrocento appears singular. Manet was sensitive to the particular technique of the work: a fresco painting on flat tile which he reproduced on a wooden support. In this three-quarter figure, he focuses on the expression specific to the questioning and worried look, while the young model's mouth is ajar. In 2019, the Public Establishment of the Musée d'Orsay made 52 acquisitions, and already eleven in the first five months of 2020. After the months of confinement, Orsay is due to reopen on June 23.
