Manet, Édouard (1832-1883)
Dans la serre (In the Conservatory)
1878–1879
Oil on canvas, 115 x 150 cm
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
In June 1896, Max Liebermann and Hugo von Tschudi were together in Paris. Tschudi, who had only been director of the National Gallery since February, acquired the large painting “In the Winter Garden” by Édouard Manet here. A purchase like a beacon that initiated the revival of the Nationalgalerie after years of stagnation. At the end of the year, the painting was the highlight of an exhibition of new acquisitions. Soon the emperor intervened in a regulatory manner, and from then on donations had to be approved by him. And as late as 1904, the picture was attacked in the Prussian House of Representatives as erotically suggestive and thus immoral (cf. Stenographic Reports on the Proceedings of the Prussian House of Deputies, 20th Legislative Period, 1st Session, 1904/05, Vol. 3, pp. 3726 ff.).
This was actually well observed: the conservatory itself, with its lush plants to the south, conveys an erotic atmosphere, and in numerous novels of the time it is the scene of corresponding situations. In this picture, however, little happens. The woman sits on the left end of the bench, the man leans forward behind it. Right in the center of the picture is the pair of hands, resting on the back of the bench. Her hand hangs loosely, his is obviously one of the more active partners. The index finger points to them, but the cigar between the fingers prevents any touch. Man and woman seem isolated in conversation.
It depicts Manet‘s friends, the Guillemet couple, who ran a fashion store in the Rue Saint-Honoré. Manet painted them in the studio of the painter Georg von Rosen, which was equipped as a greenhouse, which he used at the time. The previous January, he had been dismissed from his studio after neighbours protested against his private exhibition of two paintings rejected by the jury of the Paris Salon. | Angelika Wesenberg (Nationalgalerie)
See also:
• Guillemet, Antoine (1841-1918)