Edouard Manet, Portrait of Carolus-Duran

During the summer of 1876 Manet and fellow artist Carolus-Duran stayed at the Paris retail magnate, Impressionist art collector and patron Ernest Hoschedé’s country house in Montgeron, south of Paris. They each started to work on a portrait of the other but both paintings were left unfinished. Here, no allusion is made to Carolus-Duran as a painter; instead, he is shown in riding boots in a swaggering pose which is a direct reference to Anthony van Dyck’s Charles I at the Hunt of about 1635 (Paris, Musée du Louvre). The figure is painted finely and flatly, with little modelling. By contrast, the surroundings are worked sketchily with long, directional strokes in a variety of light greens that reveal the changeability of Manet’s relationship with Impressionism and Impressionist technique.