Manet, Édouard (1832-1883)
La Partie de Croquet (A Game of Croquet)
1873
Oil on canvas, 72 x 106 cm
Städel Museum, Frankfurt
To the countryside! In 1873, the Frenchman Edouard Manet painted en plein air with its natural light for the first time: four people playing croquet together, a popular as well as casual leisure activity. In the foreground sits fellow artist Alfred Stevens and in the background Paul Roudier, one of Manet’s friends. In between are two ladies, modelling. Manet rarely came as close to the Impressionists as he does here. Even though the picture’s composition and brushstrokes look spontaneous, the former is precisely calculated, a planned provocation: the supposedly married couples are the artists and their models – thus, the bourgeois idyll is a mere illusion. (SG)
Compare:
Manet, Édouard (1832-1883)
La Partie de Croquet
1871
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City