Manet, Édouard (1832-1883)
Portrait d’Ernest Hoschedé et sa fille Marthe (Ernest Hoschedé with his daughter Marthe)
c.1876
Oil on canvas, 97.5 x 130 cm
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires
The Portrait of Ernest Hoschedé and his Daughter is a plein air painting, finished in broad, visible brushstrokes of colour, apparently unfinished, which the artist is said to have begun on the occasion of a visit to the Château de Rottembourg in 1876, the Hoschedé family residence in Montgeron, according to a letter from Manet to his pupil Eva Gonzalès published by Moreau-Nélaton. In that same year Hoschedé commissioned Claude Monet to make decorative panels for that residence (1). In the early 1870s, following his connection with the group of young Impressionist painters, and especially with Claude Monet, Manet had begun to paint and exhibit large plein air paintings (in 1874 he exhibited Chemin de fer at the Salon), in which, as in the portrait of Hoschedé and his daughter, the figures occupy a good part of the composition. Duret claims that in order to maintain his personal manière in the face of his Impressionist friends, Manet almost never painted “pure” landscapes, but instead continued to paint human figures in his outdoor works, around which the landscape was placed as a background for the scene. After his consecration at the Salon of 1873 with Le Bon Bock (Philadelphia Museum of Art), in 1875 he again received devastating criticism with the change of direction that he signalled with L’Argenteuil (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tournai). In 1876 he was again rejected by the jury of the Salon and, encouraged by his circle of friends, intellectuals and amateurs, he held a solo exhibition in his studio, where there was an album to collect signatures and comments.
Ernest Hoschedé, a businessman, collector and amateur of modern art who had run the important Au Gagne Petit department store in Paris since 1877, had suffered a financial setback in the crisis of 1873 which forced him to sell part of his collection in 1874, two months before the Impressionist group held its first exhibition. In 1878 he made another sale of a large part of his collection, which included five important canvases by Manet (2). According to Duret, Manet had not sold a single painting until 1872, when Alfred Stevens connected him with Durand-Ruel, who acquired a lot of 28 canvases that year for a total of 38,600 francs. Hoschedé‘s two sales at the Hôtel Drouot were important milestones in the career of the Impressionist painters.
Hoschedé had a very close relationship with Claude Monet, who married his widow after his death in 1891. Marthe, their daughter, was born in 1864 and was twelve years old when she was painted by Manet.
Although Manet portrayed Hoschedé and his daughter outdoors, in a garden painted in broad brushstrokes of green tones, the attitude of the man leaning on a small table seems to correspond more to the typology of indoor portraits, as if chatting in a café. The girl, on the other hand, whose red bow stands out as a complement to the green that dominates the composition, fixes the viewer with an intense and enigmatic gaze. (Laura Malosetti Costa, MNBA)
1— Sue Roe, The Private Lives of the Impressionists. New York, Harper Collins, 2006, p. 157.
2— Merete Bodelsen, “Early Impressionist Sales 1874-94 in the light of some unpublished ‘procès-verbaux’”, The Burlington Magazine, London, vol. 110, nº 783, junio de 1968, p. 331-349.
See also:
• Hoschedé, Ernest (1837-1891) | Hoschedé Butler, Marthe (1864-1925) | Montgeron (France)