Portrait of Émile Ambre as Carmen, Édouard Manet
Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Edgar Scott, 1964
Transcript
GLORIA GROOM: Carmen is a flirt with her hand on her hip, with her fan. He’s really capturing that with this very bold and graphic brushwork. Very open, very sketch-like, but at the same time, completely finished.
NARRATOR: Dressed in character in a red bolero jacket with gold trim, the soprano Émilie Ambre posed as the title role from the opera Carmen, a role she hoped to play on the Paris stage, perhaps using this portrait as her calling card. The two likely met through Manet’s connections in the Paris opera world. She was also his landlord of sorts—he rented a house on her property, while seeking therapeutic treatments in Bellevue, on the outskirts Paris.
Even as she was busily preparing to leave for a U.S. tour, Manet had her sit for him daily.
GLORIA GROOM: Everything is in motion. Everything looks like it could move in a second, or she’s just been caught putting her hand on her hip and making some kind of a very dramatic gesture. That is where he has succeeded marvelously, even though he was not in the controlled circumstances of his studio.
NARRATOR: Manet was drawn to confident performers like Ambre, and their carefully crafted public personas. This collaboration served both artist and patron. Manet gained access to her exotic world, while the actress promoted her career.
GLORIA GROOM: He captures her as a portrait, but it's also the portrait of her identifying as an actress, or an opera singer in this classic Georges Bizet opera, where she is the feisty, dynamic, aggressive Carmen.