Ad Blankestijn: Nana by Manet (1877)

In Édouard Manet's Nana, a nearly life-size work, we see an elegant young woman with blond hair who stands before a mirror, her face turned to the spectator. Her dress is incomplete; she wears a white underskirt, a frilly blue corsage, blue silk stockings and high-heeled shoes with delicately pointed toes. The interior of the room suggests that it is a boudoir. Behind the woman is a sofa, on which a mustachioed man dressed in a black tailcoat, a white shirt and a top hat can be partly seen on the right of the painting. He is holding a walking stick.

[Nana, by Manet (1877)]

What are we seeing?

Both the title ("Nana" was a popular assumed name for female prostitutes in France during the second half of the 19th century) and numerous details suggest that the picture represents a high class prostitute and her client. Nana is depicted in a full side view, her head and especially her gaze turned towards the viewer. Her presence is bold and she overshadows her male customer. With a little half-smile on her lips, she stares directly out at the viewer. There is no shame here, but the pride of a woman who is aware of her power and likes to use it. Nana looks extremely pleased with herself.

She holds a powder puff in her right hand and a lipstick in her left - apparently she is just making up her face. In front of her, on the left side of the picture, is a make-up mirror with a three-legged, wrought iron stand and two candlesticks with burned-out, extinguished candles (indicating that the night is just over). This painting is a playful homage to the courtesans of the era.

Although there is no nudity in this painting, it caused an outrage and was refused at the Salon of Paris - it was deemed to be contemptuous of the morality of the time (even in France!). Despite that, the Third Republic (which started in 1870) was the golden age of brothels which were an integral part of social life, as you can see in the stories of Maupassant (such as The Maison Tellier) or the novels of Zola - not to mention Offenbach's wonderful operetta La Vie Parisienne, in which a Swedish aristocratic couple "does" Paris, she for shopping and the Opera, he for the women.

It was the era of famous houses, like Le Chabanais or Le Sphinx, whose reputation crossed borders, and where stars performed. In Paris at the middle of the century there were around 200 official establishments, under the control of the police and doctors, but only around sixty at the end, following the proliferation of clandestine brothels which then had 15,000 prostitutes. In 1871, the writer Maxime Du Camp estimated that Paris had 120,000 clandestine prostitutes; in 1889. the figure was put at 100,000. Alongside “meeting houses” where prostitutes did not live, but where they only came to work, there were brasseries with “rising” waitresses (115 in Paris), as well as perfumeries, or bath and massage institutes. The police estimated that 40,000 customers per day frequented the various houses, which would be equivalent to saying that a quarter of Parisian men had relationships with prostitutes.

By the way, it is possible that Manet found inspiration in L'Assommoir by Émile Zola, in which a character called Nana appears as a young prostitute. But Manet also formed an inspiration for Zola: in 1880 Zola published his well-known novel under the title of Nana in which he describes the later life of the same character.

Although refused by the Salon, Manet found another way to display his painting. He hung it in the window of a trinket shop on the Boulevard des Capucines, one of Paris’s main thoroughfares which was frequented by masses of prostitutes at night. In this way, the painting became a popular attraction.

The work is now at the Kunsthalle Hamburg in Germany.

Manet

Édouard Manet (1832–1883) was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism, known for his enigmatic and inventive paintings about urban life. His quick, flat style of painting paved the way for the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and many other modern artists by rejecting the standards of the Academy.

Manet's paintings often stirred controversy and were criticized by the art establishment and wider society. His most famous work, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), caused a scandal when it was exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863. The painting depicts two fully clothed men sitting with a naked woman in a park. And his painting Olympia of 1865 caused another scandal with its depiction of a confident and confrontational nude woman. The painting challenged traditional notions of beauty and femininity. Today too, these works, along with others such as Nana, are considered watershed paintings that mark the start of modern art.

Édouard Manet was born in Paris to an affluent and well-connected family. His father Auguste was a judge who expected his son to pursue a career in law, but, encouraged by his uncle, Édouard was drawn to painting. After a failed attempt to have him join the Navy, his father allowed Manet to study under the academic painter Thomas Couture (from 1850 to 1856). In his spare time, Manet copied Old Masters such as Titian in the Louvre. He also made brief visits to Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, during which time he was influenced by the Dutch painter Frans Hals and the Spanish artists Velázquez and Goya. In 1856, Manet opened his own studio and started working in earnest.

In 1863, Manet married Suzanne Leenhoff, a Dutch-born piano teacher two years his senior with whom he had been romantically involved for almost ten years. Leenhoff initially had been employed by Manet's father, Auguste, to teach Manet and his younger brother piano. It is rumored that she also may have been Auguste's mistress.

Manet became friends with the Impressionists Degas, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Cézanne, and Pissarro through another painter, Berthe Morisot, who was a member of the group and drew him into their activities. They later became widely known as the Batignolles group (Le groupe des Batignolles).

[A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) was one of the last paintings of Manet. It depicts a scene in the Folies-Bergère nightclub in Paris. The woman at the bar is a real person, known as Suzon, who worked at the Folies-Bergère in the early 1880s. Thus she represents one of the barmaid/prostitutes for which the Folies-Bergère was well-known. She lacks the bold self-awareness of Nana, but that is not so strange considering her more difficult circumstances.]

The roughly painted style and photographic lighting in Manet's paintings was seen as specifically modern, and as a challenge to the Renaissance works he copied or used as source material. He used a direct, alla prima method of painting employing opaque paint on a light ground. Novel at the time, this method made possible the completion of a painting in a single sitting. It was adopted by the Impressionists, and became the prevalent method of painting in oils for following generations. Manet's work is considered "early modern", partially because of the opaque flatness of his surfaces, the frequent sketch-like passages, and the black outlining of figures, all of which draw attention to the surface of the picture plane and the material quality of paint.

But above all, he created Nana, in which he showed us a young courtesan face to face, as a real person, not someone you could lightly brush aside.