Currently not on view
Young Woman in A Round Hat from Album of photographs of the work of Edouard Manet,
ca. 1883
After Manet’s death, his stepson, Léon Koella Leenhoff, hired Fernand Lochard to photograph the works in the artist’s studio, to accompany an inventory. The photographs—mounted in four albums now in the collections of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris—allow us to investigate posthumous changes made to the paintings.
This is the first time that the Lochard photograph and the painting have been shown together. Comparing the two reveals that changes were made to certain areas, such as the sitter’s left arm. However, interpreting the comparison is a subject of scholarly deliberation. The photographic processes of the late nineteenth century may misrepresent certain colors; for example, the woman’s bright yellow buttons appear black in the photograph. Other differences between the photograph and the painting are the result of additions after the photograph was taken—for example, the dark line in the woman’s arm must have been covered, the spaces between the fingers filled in, and the signature added.
Information
ca. 1883