Portrait of a straight-faced, light-skinned man with a bushy, light-brown beard and rosy cheeks wearing a dark vest, jacket, and shiny top hat. He grasps a thin cane, held horizontally, with both hands.

Édouard Manet

1867

Henri Fantin-Latour (French, 1836–1904)

France

Finely dressed and carrying an elegant walking stick, influential French artist Édouard Manet appears before a stark background evocative of his own paintings as well as photographic portraits of the time. Created by his friend Henri Fantin-Latour, this depiction confronted the public perception of Manet as a radical bohemian painter of coarse and confrontational compositions (for an example of this, see his Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers). Fantin-Latour instead portrayed him as the genteel man-about-town he actually was.

Oil on canvas

Painting and Sculpture of Europe