The Balcony (painting)
The balcony (French: Le Balcon ) is a painting by Édouard Manet. It was built 1868-69 and shows two women and a man on a balcony. Model were three friends of the painter Berthe Morisot, Manet married in 1877 his brother, the violinist Fanny Claus and the painter Antoine Guillemet. It is assumed that Manet's Balcony Francisco de Goya's motive Mayans restaged on a balcony from 1810 to 1815.
Description
On the screen, four people are seen. In the left foreground sits Berthe Morisot. She wears a white dress whose transparency can shine through the left forearm and its opulent wealth the body shapes otherwise completely veiled. The hands of Morisot include a closed compartments, as if the sun disappeared behind clouds, so contrary to expectations, there is no need to zuzufächeln coolness. Between the legs of the chair on which she sits, a black and white pied dog is to see through the peeps on the road between the grid bars of the balcony railing. Apparently, he is the one who really thinks the only looking for something. A piece of reset in the right half of the picture we see standing Fanny Claus, is reported by the that they fought for the privilege of the model standing with Berthe Morisot, who was allowed to completely forward position on the painting. In the oil sketch portrait of Mademoiselle Claus Fanny Claus takes a more sedentary position. Fanny Claus also wearing white, but less lush than the winner around the square in the foreground of the image. Centered behind the women whose oppositely facing attitude seems to betray that they have the dispute not forgiven, we see Antoine guillemet correctly with dark frock coat, white shirt and blue tie. With a lit cigarette in his left hand he stands there as a representative of satisfied bourgeoisie, less busy, something to look at, as to be recognized by any passersby on the street as a worthy patron. The fourth person almost disappears in the darkness of the room, the contours of which are hard to guess. There seems to be a servant who wears a silver tea kettle. In addition to the white that surrounds the ladies and the black of the frock coat and the indefinite darkness of the room, you see on the image greenery. What is meant is not the green hydrangea, which plays to the left of Berthe Morisot a bit of space, but the painting of shutters and balcony railings.
Response of the critique
After all, was the image, adopted by the Paris Salon in contrast to many other paintings of Manet. This did not protect the painter but also this time in front of the rejection by the majority of his critics. Louis Renault mocked on 27 May 1869 it was Manet's specialty, to terrify the citizens through deliberate ugliness. Arthur de Boissieu recommended to the painter, but prefer to remain unknown, and the writer Théophile Gautier, in turn, flooded his reading contemporaries by tidal waves baroque details, said condescendingly, Manet could be a good painter, if he then would be more trouble to do so.
Manet and Goya's interpretation of the theme
59 years before Manet painted Goya four people on a balcony. However, while the people Manet's look in different directions, as if they had no more to do with each other than to pose for the same painter, Goya's group has a completely different dynamic. His four are not only summoned by the tea that brings a servant. Rather, they are centered on the center of the image out as if there were in them a conspiratorial agreement before that teaming up against a common danger from the outside. Accordingly, the colors Manet's distancing act cool while Goya's Dark seems to betray the passion that welds together the alliance of four people.