Manet, Édouard (1832-1883)
Portrait d’Antonin Proust (Portrait of Antonin Proust)
1881
Oil on canvas, 183 x 110.5 cm
Musée Fabre, Montpellier
Antonin Proust was a key figure in artistic life under the Third Republic. Born in Niort in 1832, he studied philosophy, followed by a trip to Greece from which he wrote a book, Un philosophe en voyage, published in 1864 under the pseudonym Antonin Barthélémy. His political career was forged in opposition to the Empire and within the press: he contributed to several newspapers and founded La Semaine universelle in 1864. He campaigned against the plebiscite, was condemned for his writings, and ran unsuccessfully in the legislative elections in 1869. A correspondent for Le Temps during the war of 1870, he became the secretary of Léon Gambetta, who would henceforth be his protector in politics. In 1876 he was elected deputy of Deux-Sèvres, a mandate he held until 1893, president of the general council from 1877 to 1881, mayor of Niort in 1881. Alongside his political career, this founding father of the Third Republic was a fervent friend of the arts; he was the author of the illustrations of his travels in Greece for the magazine Le Tour du monde and continued to paint throughout his life. Admitted to the studio of Thomas Couture in 1850, he met his college classmate, Édouard Manet. Their friendship was strengthened during three years spent fighting academic doctrines, frequenting the bohemianism of Charles Baudelaire, Henry Mürger, Alexandre Dumas fils, following the advice of Eugène Delacroix, and infuriating Couture. When Gambetta formed his “grand ministry” in November 1881, he logically called upon Antonin Proust, rapporteur of the Fine Arts budget since 1879, and created for him the first Ministry of Fine Arts. Knowing the fragility of this government, which, faced with the hostility of the Chamber, fell three months later, Antonin Proust acted quickly to mark his brief ministry with important measures: he created the École du Louvre, the Museum of Comparative Sculpture, the Museum of Decorative Arts (he commissioned Auguste Rodin to create a door for this museum, which would become The Gates of Hell), rehabilitated Gustave Courbet by organizing the first official exhibition at the École des Beaux-Arts, and decorated his friend Édouard Manet with the Legion of Honor. Antonin Proust was a regular visitor to Manet‘s studio, who left behind a number of portraits of his friend, more or less completed. Several attempts were necessary before the famous painting presented at the Salon of 1880 (Toledo Museum of Art), where the appearance of an Antonin Proust wearing a top hat caused a certain stir. The study of the Fabre Museum, less advanced, belongs to a set produced around 1877, and which also includes a half-length portrait, facing forward, kept at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, in Moscow. The rapid execution, denoted by the barely brushed background, is highlighted by real pieces of bravery, such as the gloved hand, the polished shoe, the hat which make the final painting a true masterpiece. After a dubious sale to the Cologne museum during the Second World War, the painting was recovered by the Allied forces and, in the absence of a declared owner, attributed to the Fabre Museum in 1852 under the provisional status of MNR (National Museums Recovery). (Musée Fabre)
See also:
• Proust, Antonin (1832-1905)