Manet, Édouard (1832-1883)
La Femme au chat (Woman with a Cat)
c.1880
Oil on canvas, 92.1 x 73 cm
Tate Britain, London
This unfinished portrait is of Manet‘s wife. It is one of his later works, painted a few years before his death at the age of fifty-one. These were the most freely painted of his career. He then also used pastel, and the parallel shading of this sketch is like the application of pastels. Manet then favoured small scale and casual subjects. (Tate)
A middle-aged woman, apparently lost in thought, sits on a couch or sofa in the corner of a room. Dominating the scene is the black and white cat sleeping peacefully on her lap. We are looking at one of Édouard Manet’s most relaxed and intimate portraits of his wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, and their pet cat Zizi.
The couple met when she was appointed as his piano teacher. She was 19 and he was 22. They became secret lovers throughout their 20s, and finally married in 1863, a year after Manet’s father Auguste died.
Manet painted Suzanne several times. The exact date of this picture is not known. It was probably made in 1880 or later and so counts as his last portrait of her. He may have been still working on it when he died in 1883. (NG)
See also:
• Manet, Suzanne (1830-1906)