Édouard Manet - On the Beach - Suzanne and Eugene Manet at Berck 1873
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On the Beach - Suzanne and Eugene Manet at Berck 1873
95x73cm oil/canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
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From Musée d'Orsay, Paris:
Manet painted this canvas in the summer of 1873, during three weeks spent with his family in the little coastal town of Berck-sur-Mer. He had his wife and his brother pose for him on the beach as is shown by the grains of sand mixed with the paint. Suzanne, well protected against the sun and the wind by a muslin veil and a voluminous summer dress, is absorbed in her book. Eugène, the painter's brother and soon to be the husband of Berthe Morisot, is gazing out to sea, lying in the same position as ten years earlier in Lunch on the Grass. The two triangles formed by the figures stabilise the composition. They are turning their backs on a spectator and seem to be absorbed in their own worlds. This isolation gives the painting an indefinable melancholic feel.