A Painter of Spanish Life: Manet's Portrait of Madame Brunet
by Gregg Chadwick Édouard Manet Portrait of Madame Brunet 52 1/8" x 39 3/8" oil on canvas 1860-1863 (Reworked in 1867) Recently Purchased by the Getty Museum, Los Angeles Courtesy Getty Museum In 1862 in Le Boulevard , a Parisian news sheet which was a sort of precursor to the L.A. Weekly or the Village Voice , the poet Baudelaire wrote a small article entitled Painters and Engravers . This was one of the few times that Baudelaire, who in his essay The Painter of Modern Life called for artists to search for subjects in the rancor and din of the urban street, wrote expressly about the art of his friend Édouard Manet. Baudelaire wrote,"M. Manet is the author of The Spanish Singer , which caused a great sensation in the last Salon. We will see in the next one a number of paintings by him imbued with the flavor of Spain, which leads one to believe that the genius of Spain has fled to France." With the news that the Getty Museum has purchased Édouard Manet'...
