Lecture: Manet and His Writers: Baudelaire, Zola, Mallarme

May 23, 2015 
Emily A. Beeny, Associate Curator, Norton Simon Museum

Émile Zola, memorialized in Manet’s famous portrait, was not the only writer with whom Manet’s reputation was linked over the course of his career. The artist developed relationships with a number of French writers including three who were perhaps the most influential of their age: the late-Romantic poet Charles Baudelaire, the Naturalist novelist Émile Zola, and the elegant, elusive Symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé. Serving respectively as a mentor, an ally and a friend, Baudelaire, Zola and Mallarmé each saw something of himself in Manet and each bequeathed to posterity a different idea of the artist.

Presented in conjunction with Tête-à-tête: Three Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay.