Rembrandt Interprets Edouard Manet’s, Le Déjeuner Sur L’herbe

The London Courtauld institution supports the idea that its own smaller version is a preparatory work-in-progress of Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe at Paris’s Musée d’Orsay.  Research by Conservators at the Courtauld, 25 November 2016 supports a theory that its version is a preparatory work by Manet created for in the Musée d’Orsay version. Prior to 2013 it was accepted as a version, created by a skilled copyist who was an admirer of Manet. This sounds reasonable: few examples exist in history of important painters creating a preparatory interpretation that is unswervingly repeated in the final version. It is uncharacteristic of creative artists to work in this manner.
Louvre museum rules for copying paintings were restricted by twenty percent 20% to the original on display. Edouard Manet copied in the Louvre in the late 1850s. He was familiar with these restrictions and this may explain the Courtauld version’s 89.5 x 116.5 cm reduced format contrasted with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris version of 207 × 265 cm. The demand for copies of celebrated art was high throughout the nineteenth century. Louvre reserved some days entirely for artists to paint. In a similar manner the villa borghese Rome museum permitted Moss, then an art student in the late 1950s to copy, selected old master paintings, but limited to the hours prior to the doors opening to the public.

Where two versions exist of a work of art such as the Caravaggio’s, The Taking of Christ, in the National Gallery of Ireland and the version in the Museum of Western European and Oriental Art, Odessa there is little controversy amongst researchers that the latter is a copy.

Similarly, two versions of Leonardo da Vinci‘s, The Virgin of the Rocks London and Paris are considered to be by the same painter. The similarity of the two versions have a practical explanation The Louvre version, painted between 1483 and1486 was refused by the Milan church that commissioned the work of art because it contained incorrect iconographic elements. Leonardo then sold it on to Ludovico il Moro. The London National Gallery version is also attributed to him and of the period 1499 and 1506. It shows, according to scholars, evidence of intervention by contemporary painters, possibly interventions by contemporary assistants.
There are many references in Italian art history to similar subjects by Giorgione and Titian onwards but less so in Dutch Reformation-period art.

 

The man on the right has evolved from the images of the brothers Eugène and Gustave Manet. He appears to be gesturing, using his right hand to create, an approximate version of Dürer’s xylogravure of 1535, of how to create a drawing of a foreshortened image. The seated female figure facing him is Victorine-Louise Meurent, a fellow painter and often his model. Similarly, Rembrandt has his arm outstretched and his right hand holding a brush as he paints her portrait: the artist is reclining on a large flowering tree with copious and dense evergreen foliage and hanging Ligurian lemons. Toulouse Lautrec, an additional clothed male figure, is now closely holding Rembrandt’s seated model. He has replaced the Dutch painter Ferdinand Leenhoff, another of Manet’s relatives. 

On the top centre appears a sad-faced Vincent van Gogh, revealing his trade-mark bandaged ear and clutching a blank canvas.  He replaces Manet’s isolated lightly dressed female figure bathing in a forest stream. The woodlands are supplanted by an Italian landscape, the mouth of Roja river, Ventimiglia on the border with France. Trees and different foliage appear with the medieval churches and buildings appearing just beyond. The stream appears, again, at Rembrandt’s feet.

The crows that hover ominously over van Gogh’s left shoulder presage his final last weeks of existence. An belief popularly attributed to in his Wheatfield with Crows, ( Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). The artist was likely inspired by Charles Daubigny’s, Tree with hovering Crows, 1867 Etching. An artist of the previous generation though they never met, he seriously influenced van Gogh’s working style. He had a similar impact on the modus operandi of Claude Monet and the earlier Impressionists.

On the bottom left-hand corner, Manet’s image of abandoned female clothes and the carelessly discarded wicker basket that has scattered a bread roll on the grass, Rembrandt has replaced them with two hounds that are observing the scene with some curiosity.

The figure on the right has evolved from the images of two brothers Eugène and Gustave Manet. He is gesturing, using his right hand seemingly creating, a version of Dürer’s xylogravure of 1535, of how to draw a foreshortened image. The seated female figure facing him is Victorine-Louise Meurent, a fellow painter and often his model. Similarly, Rembrandt has his arm outstretched and his right hand holding a brush as he paints her portrait: the artist is reclining on a large flowering tree with copious and dense evergreen foliage and hanging Ligurian lemons. Toulouse Lautrec, an additional clothed male figure, is now holding closely, Rembrandt’s seated model. He replaces the Dutch painter Ferdinand Leenhoff, another of Manet’s relatives.

Rembrandt’s1639 Sketch of Raphael’s Baldassare Castiglione 1515 portrait, that is now in Vienna’s, Albertina museum was an inspiration for his subsequent etchings and painted self portraits of 1639/40 acknowledgment of the earlier artist’s historical importance: not to mention as a valuable object that art buyers paid figures/prices much superior anything he could realise. No wonder, then, his well-founded to use of the Baldassare Castiglione portrait, as a means to add emphasise of the quality in his self-portraits making originality/ authenticity a point of emphasis by adding perceived added value. There are few examples in history of important painters creating preparatory versions that will be unswervingly repeated in the final version. It is uncharacteristic of original artists to mishandle their talent and skills in this manner.