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The Absinthe Drinker (French: Le Buveur d'absinthe) is an early painting by Édouard Manet, executed c. 1859, considered to be his first major painting and first original work.[1] It is now in the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Background and history

Manet became a student in the studio of Thomas Couture from 1850 but over time he grew to dislike his master's Salon style and thereafter set up his own studio in 1856. Little of Manet's earliest work survives and much may have been destroyed by Manet himself.

The Absinthe Drinker is a full-length portrait of an alcoholic chiffonnier (rag-picker) named Collardet who frequented that area around the Louvre in Paris.[2] Collardet is painted in mostly brown, grey and black tones. The subject is standing, wears a black top hat and is wrapped in a brown cloak, like an aristocrat; he leans on a ledge with the empty bottle discarded on the floor by his feet.[3] Manet later added a half-full glass of absinthe on the ledge.[4] Influenced by the realism of Gustave Courbet, the work shows a mundane subject on a large scale, measuring 180.5 centimetres (71.1 in) high by 105.6 centimetres (41.6 in) wide. Manet may have taken inspiration from the poem Le Vin des chiffonniers ("The rag-pickers' wine") in Charles Baudelaire's 1857 collection Les Fleurs du mal, from the paintings of ordinary people by Diego Velázquez (particularly his paintings of Aesop and Menippus), and from Watteau's L'Indifférent.^{[citation needed]}

Near the completion of the painting, Manet showed the work to his former master. Asked for his opinion, Couture is said to have retorted: "An absinthe drinker! And they paint abominations like that! My poor friend, you are the absinthe drinker. It is you who have lost your moral sense."[4] [note 1]

The Absinthe Drinker was the first work that Manet submitted to the Paris Salon in 1859. It was rejected with only Eugène Delacroix voting in its favour.[5] Part of the reason for its rejection may be its subject; absinthe was thought to be addictive and considered morally degenerate, and this was one of the earliest depictions of absinthe in art.[4] The painting, however, also has technical faults; it is unevenly finished, with brushstrokes visible in places, and the legs join awkwardly with the subject's body.[6] According to art historian Charles F. Stuckey, the painting presented in 1859 may have been significantly different and inferior to the current version, with the subject's legs and the absinthe glass not depicted.[4] Refusal of other works by young painters led eventually to the creation of the Salon des Refusés in 1863.

Manet continued to revise the work after 1859 and inserted the same cloaked figure into his 1862 painting The Old Musician. The original full-length portrait was cut down to three-quarter length by 1867 when it was exhibited by Manet with 56 other works in a self-funded retrospective at the Exposition Universelle held in Paris, but extended again by 1872 when Manet sold The Absinthe Drinker and 23 other works to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. The glass of absinthe was a late addition, between 1867 and 1872.

The painting was sold to opera singer Jean-Baptiste Faure in 1906 and exhibited at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen in 1914 when it was acquired for the Ny Carlsberg Foundation. It was one of the first modern works added to the collection at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, where it is still held.[7]

Possible inspirations

• 
  Aesop by Velázquez
• 
  Menippus by Velázquez
• 
  L'Indifférent by Watteau

See also

• L'Absinthe by Edgar Degas

Notes

References

• Manet's Silence and the Poetics of Bouquets, James Henry Rubin, pp. 36-38.
• Hideous Absinthe: A History of the Devil in a Bottle, Jad Adams, pp. 35-38.
• Manet's Modernism: Or, The Face of Painting in the 1860s, Michael Fried, p. 34.

External links

Media related to The Absinthe Drinker at Wikimedia Commons

На других языках

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[de] Der Absinthtrinker

Der Absinthtrinker (französisch: Le Buveur d’absinthe) gilt als das erste eigenständige Gemälde des französischen Malers Édouard Manet. Die Darstellung eines Menschen am Rande der Gesellschaft ist durch den Maler Diego Velázquez und das literarische Werk von Charles Baudelaire beeinflusst. Manet hatte das in Öl auf Leinwand gemalte Bild zunächst um 1859 fertiggestellt und danach mehrfach überarbeitet, bevor er es 1872 verkaufte. Anhand von grafischen Arbeiten Manets und den Ergebnissen wissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen lässt sich der langjährige Entstehungsprozess des Gemäldes zurückverfolgen. Hierdurch ergeben sich auch exemplarische Aufschlüsse auf Manets Arbeitsweise. Das Gemälde befindet sich heute in der Sammlung der Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Kopenhagen.

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- [en] The Absinthe Drinker (Manet)

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[fr] Le Buveur d'absinthe

Le Buveur d'absinthe est un tableau réalisé par le peintre Édouard Manet entre 1858 et 1859.

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[it] Il bevitore di assenzio

Bevitore d'assenzio (Le Buveur d'absinthe) è un dipinto a olio su tela (180,5×105,6 cm) del pittore francese Édouard Manet, realizzato nel 1858-1859 e conservato alla Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek di Copenaghen.

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