Maison à Rueil (1882)

Manet, Édouard (1832-1883)

Maison à Rueil (House at Rueil)
1882
Oil on canvas, 71.5 × 92.3 cm
Alte NationalgalerieBerlin

Édouard Manet spent the last summer of his life, already marked by a serious illness, in the country house of the comedy writer Eugène Labiche in Rueil near Paris. In his choice of motifs, he was limited to the very immediate surroundings, but it was precisely here that truly great pictures were achieved. Hugo von Tschudi, the director of the National Gallery, described the “Landhaus in Rueil” in his application for donation as a “picture that already seems completely classical due to the serene maturity of the view, the sure technique, the beauty of the painting” (SMB-ZA, I/NG 994, journal no. 1906/1247, Bl. 352).
The sunlit wall of the country house, which is reproduced parallel to the image, closes off the narrow picture plane against the background. We see little of the roof of the house, nothing of the sky. In front of the pale yellow wall of the house with the bluish shutters, there are bushes, lawns and flower borders. The light purple path connects the house and the garden in terms of space and colour. The picture is dominated by the colour tone of yellow, blue and green, well calculated with the flowers in the foreground patchy red is added. Summed up, it repeats itself in a wall strip.
It is this thoughtful, austere composition of the picture, which seems so cheerful and light, that makes it appear classical and that provokes a comparison with the art of Japan. In Japanese woodblock prints, such as Hokusai’s views of Mount Fuji from the 1830s, there is this flatness and sudden cut-out, which is unusual for the art of the time. It is also possible that Manet encountered the motif of a tree standing in the centre of the picture, but only visible with its trunk. A little later, trees depicted in cuts became one of the main motifs of Japonisme in Western European painting. We encounter them in paintings by Monet, van Gogh and Hodler, for example. | Angelika Wesenberg (Nationalgalerie)

Compare:

Manet, Édouard (1832-1883)
La Maison à Rueil
1882
National Gallery of VictoriaMelbourne

 

 

See also:

• Rueil-Malmaison (France)