The belle epoque’s first cover girl

The final appearance of Manet’s work during his lifetime took place at the state-sponsored Salon of 1882, a year before his premature death at the age of 51. The artist showed two paintings: Un Bar aux Folies-Bergere (1881-1882), the masterpiece of his career, and, seen here, Le Printemps (1881). Unlike the outcry caused by his painting Olympia (1863) at the Salon of 1865, both works were rapturously received.

As the master of the figure among the practitioners of the ‘New Painting’, Manet radically transformed the scope of modern portraiture, embracing both tradition and the heady world of belle epoque Paris. He was the pioneer of a revolutionary new style and its contemporary content, and this portrait of the actress Jeanne Demarsy, cast as an allegory of Spring, represents the climax of Manet’s approach to femininity and fashion.

The idea of painting a cycle of paintings depicting The Four Seasons, and couched in contemporary ideals of feminine beauty and fashion, was put to Manet by his best friend, the well-known journalist Antonin Proust. Pissarro, Millet and Cezanne had already produced Seasons during the pre- and early Impressionist period, and like Cezanne, Manet would interpret the seasons as female figures. As a connoisseur of la vie moderne, however, his would be the kind of fashionably attired, attractive young women one might have encountered in the Bois de Boulogne, the Jardin du Luxembourg or the Tuileries.

Proust recalled Manet enthusiastically poring over fashionable materials and hats for the costume he wanted to design for his model for Spring. An attractive actress in her late teens, Demarsy was born Anne Darlaud, the daughter of a bookbinder and a brocade maker. Jeanne's older sister was the already successful actress Eugenie-Marie Darlaud, and it was her fresh, youthful beauty that caught Manet’s eye just as she was embarking on her theatrical career.

From left: Jeanne Demarsy (1865-1937). Le Printemps by Edouard Manet (1881)

Le Printemps, the first of Manet’s seasons, was already underway during the Autumn of 1881 when the artist began to make plans for the next instalment in the series. Proust wrote of the artist informing him of his plans to paint his friend and lover Mery Laurent as Autumn, and eulogising over a fur-trimmed coat the model would wear. In both Seasons paintings, Manet’s interest in the intricacies of fashion, as well as the sensual aspect of the materials themselves, is apparent. It is also noteworthy that both Demarsy and Laurent appear in Un Bar aux Folies-Berger along the balcony reflected in the large mirror to the left of the standing hostess.

Of the Four Seasons, Manet completed only Le Printemps, with critics and journalists acknowledging for the first time not only the merits of modernism in his art, but also commenting on the emergence of a new kind of feminine public persona.

Contemporary interest was growing in the idea of the stylish, young Parisienne, adorned in the latest fashions that appeared on the covers of department store catalogues. Manet’s treatment of Jeanne Demarsy, who embodied a combination of confidence, sensuality and indifference, served to transform her into a Belle Epoque forerunner of the present-day fashionista and cover girl.

The success of both paintings in the Salon of 1882 led to widespread calls for reproduced images of both Le Printemps and Un Bar aux Folies-Bergere although it was the former that proved to be most in demand.

Manet made an India ink drawing of the painting in 1882 that became the basis for an etching with aquatint done soon afterwards, the artist’s final work in this medium. Charles Cros then produced a trichromatic photograph of the painting, printed in reverse, which was used to illustrate the cover of Ernest Hoschede’s Impressions de mon voyage au Salon de 1882, thus making Le Printemps the first published work of art reproduced in colour.

Le Printemps by Edouard Manet (1881) is offered in the Impressionist and Modern Art Sales in New York, 5-6 November. For more information and specialist picks, click here 

Private Collection/Look and Learn/ Elgar Collection/Bridgeman Images
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay)/René-Gabriel Ojéda