NARRATOR:
Edouard Manet’s figure portrays a ragpicker, a member of a group of Parisians who regulated the gathering of urban refuse and rejected the bourgeois lifestyle. Avant-garde artists of the day related to the ragpickers’ outsider status, which freed them from socially restrictive conventions. Manet and his friend, the symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire, associated ragpickers with the long Parisian tradition of the beggar philosopher.
This is the largest, and the last of four paintings Manet called “Philosophers”—his homage to the monumental series of the same name by Diego Velásquez. Manet had just returned from a trip to Spain, where he reveled in the work of this 17th-century Spanish master. In an 1865 letter, he wrote about Velásquez’s portrait of an actor:
ACTOR (MANET):
“The background disappears; air surrounds the man.”
NARRATOR:
There’s no horizon line in Manet’s painting; the floor and wall literally disappear into each other, pushing the figure forward, and flattening it out. Only the walking stick and the seemingly random heap of garbage at the bottom anchor the figure in the real world. One derisive critic even compared this picture to a playing-card.
Manet played a central role in the struggle undertaken by progressive artists in the late 19th century. In the 1860s, he led a realist school of painters and writers whose dedication to contemporary subjects pointed toward the revolutionary movement known as Impressionism.
In 1865, the same year he visited Spain, Manet exhibited his painting Olympia—a brazen portrayal of a contemporary prostitute. First seen as an offense to art-she was an unidealized nude-and morals-she was as starkly painted as his Ragpicker, Olympia finally entered the Louvre in 1908, and is now considered a great masterpiece. Manet has since been widely regarded as the first true proponent of modern art.
The Ragpicker
c. 1865-1870
Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883)
On View
The Ragpicker represents one of the practitioners of a now-obsolete profession that involved sifting through the detritus of daily life—not only rags, which were sold to paper manufacturers—but also kitchen scraps, soap and other castoffs that were left out for trash collectors. Sorting garbage might sound like work for the truly destitute, but these scavengers were regulated, semiprofessional recyclers of city waste, and they were seen as a discrete social type, one that was free from the restrictions and inhibitions of a traditional bourgeois lifestyle.
Manet, who was experiencing his own sense of alienation and rejection from established art circles, may have identified with his embattled subject. Both artist and ragpicker could be seen as bohemians who operated on the margins and earned a living by making use of the stuff of everyday life. The small still-life element in the lower foreground of this painting, a pile of opened oyster shells, coupled with a broken champagne bottle and lemon peels, may symbolize this shared creative act.
Details
- Artist Name: Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883)
- Title: The Ragpicker
- Date: c. 1865-1870
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 76-3/4 x 51-1/2 in. (194.9 x 130.8 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1968.09.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
The artist, sold 1871-72 for Ff. 1000 to;
[Durand-Ruel, Paris, for Ff. 1500 to];
Ernest Hoschedé (1837-1890), Paris (sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 5-6 June 1878, lot 45, as Le Mendiant, for Ff. 800 to);
Duquesne, Paris.
Fernand Crouan, Nantes, by 1884.
Adolf Rothermundt, Blasewitz (near Dresden), by 1906-1921.
[Paul Cassirer, Berlin].
Josef Stransky (1872-1936), New York, 1921.
Adolph Lewisohn (d. 1938), New York, by 1926, to;
[Wildenstein & Co., New York and Paris, by 1931].
[Wildenstein & Co., New York, reacquired ca. 1950, later sold to];
H., Geneva (Mr. Schlepfer), by 1964 until at least 1967;
[Wildenstein & Co., New York, sold March, 1968 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
[Durand-Ruel, Paris, for Ff. 1500 to];
Ernest Hoschedé (1837-1890), Paris (sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 5-6 June 1878, lot 45, as Le Mendiant, for Ff. 800 to);
Duquesne, Paris.
Fernand Crouan, Nantes, by 1884.
Adolf Rothermundt, Blasewitz (near Dresden), by 1906-1921.
[Paul Cassirer, Berlin].
Josef Stransky (1872-1936), New York, 1921.
Adolph Lewisohn (d. 1938), New York, by 1926, to;
[Wildenstein & Co., New York and Paris, by 1931].
[Wildenstein & Co., New York, reacquired ca. 1950, later sold to];
H., Geneva (Mr. Schlepfer), by 1964 until at least 1967;
[Wildenstein & Co., New York, sold March, 1968 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Elfte Ausstellung der Berliner Secession
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