Musée No:583.163
Regular price £25.00Portrait of Antonio Proust
Artist: Edouard Manet
Date : unknown
Edouard Manet (1832-1883) was a French painter who initially wanted to join the Navy. He was born into a wealthy family so did not need to sell his work to live, but he craved the recognition as a proper artist. Now, infamously, the 1863 ‘Salon’ jury rejected more than half of the five thousand works submitted to them, including Manet’s “Déjeuner sur l'herbe” (yes, that one!). He continued to submit works to the Salon but in 1855 he organised his own Pavillion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris showing more than 50 of his own works. His talent and modernity were recognized by people like Emile Zola who defended him against harsh criticism by proclaiming him the greatest painter of the 19th century.
The sitter: Antonio Proust (1832 –1905) was a French journalist and politician and a lifelong friend of Edouard Manet who he met during their time together at school. From 1881–1882 he was minister of the fine arts, and regularly commissioned to draw up the budget for the fine arts. Prosecuted in connection with the Panama scandals (a failed attempt to build the canal where nearly half a billion French francs were lost), he was acquitted in 1893 but from then on lived a very secluded life. In 1905 he shot himself. (He was not related to the famous writer Marcel Proust).
