Exploring Manet’s In the Conservatory
Lazy to read Madame Bovary? Just have a look at Edouard Manet’s In the Conservatory, a masterpiece of feminism and modernity, painted in 1879.
Fair to say it’s unusual to see double-portraits that don’t represent Adam & Eve or Venus & Adonis…but a married couple, alliances in the spotlight, right at the center of the composition.
The choice of a double-portrait suggests a silent dialogue between the two characters, a mute tension, much like in The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger.
The description of the characters , their whole story is written on their posture : the man looks weak, stuck behind the bars of the bench like a lion in cage, bent under the top of the frame, shyly approaching his hand to his wife with restrained desire, and signs of age on his face. His wife looks elegant in her arrogant distance -neurasthenia’s lurking. You can almost hear an echo of Flaubert’s description of the Bovarys:
“For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of the provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his luck, jealous of everyone, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to live at peace.
His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once, expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered, grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so much without complaint at first, until she had seem him going after all the village drabs, and until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent, burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death.”
The man’s not in his best shape, you can physically spot his weaknesses: looking closely, he suffers from an eye condition
Diving even closer, you can see the ill-looking tones of his skin: greens, reds and oranges…
…even reds and blues. If I were in his shoes, I would quickly take an appointment with a dermatologist.
I might be over-interpreting, but I’m wondering if the small burn mark on his finger isn’t meant to contribute to this impression of sickness. Maybe it was a spark from the cigar he is holding -it would be quite touching to imagine Jules Guillemet, the model, unintentionally made this scar on his immortal representation, making a connection between the man and his artistic double beyond centuries.
By the way, the cigar can’t be innocent. You don’t have a cigar by chance on a painting, especially when there are open flowers nearby, and when the work has been done by the author of the daring Luncheon on the Grass.
I can’t help but notice how ridiculously small this cigar looks compared to the wife’s umbrella. Remember it was painted when Freud’s theories were in their glory, by an artist representing the evolutions of modern Parisian society at the turn of the century.
Even the colors of the background give hints on the relations that unite the two characters. The woman, in bright yellow, looks like a flower among flowers. Her carnation is reminiscent of the roses, and the blue of her eyes is echoed by the irises.
The dress also, by its color and shape, resonates with the lavish vase in the left corner. This might be yet another allusion to psychoanalysis, with a symbolic representation of the woman as an elaborate earthenware vase, glimmering like a jewel in front of a simple raw pot, bearing Manet’s signature.
The modernism of this masterpiece subtly outcrops through these highly symbolic details, revealing the changes of an artistic world in search of more freshness, truth and spontaneity. You can see how modern even the technique is, in the way Manet captured light glinting on the lace cuff, the golden bracelet and the velvet glove. Just vague enough to let you imagine a reflection on the bracelet…
