Antonin Proust, Édouard Manet
Toledo Museum of Art, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1925.108. Photo: Richard Goodbody Inc., New York
Transcript
NARRATOR: Curator Scott Allan introduces this self-assured gentleman.
SCOTT ALLAN: Antonin Proust was born in the same year as Manet. They’re exact contemporaries, and he was a close childhood friend. And at the time that Manet portrayed him in this painting, Proust had become a really important player in the state arts administration.
NARRATOR: Manet’s portrait is personal. Here he shows Proust as if he has stopped by for a visit. Manet has one shot to dash off a portrait—or so he would have the viewer think. In fact, Manet labored mightily on the painting. Take a look at the blue top hat. A friend noted Manet’s frustration with the accessory, which he restarted twenty times in his presence. On the right, Proust’s bare hand clutches a yellow glove. On his lapel, the suggestion of a pink rose.
SCOTT ALLAN: He’s very much the fashionable dandy, much like Manet was himself. There’s a way that these two were very much cut from the same cloth, and you could even read Proust with his beard and top hat and his gloves and cane as a stand in for Manet himself, mounting a charm offensive in the Salon.
NARRATOR: The Salon was the official, state-sponsored exhibition venue. It was significant for the careers of both Manet and his sitter.
SCOTT ALLAN: In a lot of ways Manet conforms to the conventions of the genre for quote unquote official political portraiture. This three-quarter length portrait, the dark nondescript background, the frock coat, all of those things are fairly conventional.
NARRATOR: The jury would not award Manet the top medal at the Salon of 1880. But Proust, promoted in painting by his friend, would be named minister of fine arts the following year. And, as minister, he nominated—who else—but Manet to the Legion of Honor.