The Spanish Singer

Manet painted this in 1860, before he had exhibited at any major Salon. It is one of his earliest accepted works and the painting that established his reputation when it was shown at the Salon of 1861. A young man sits on the ground, cross-legged, playing a guitar. He wears a yellow jacket and a red sash, a Spanish costume. A wide-brimmed hat sits on the ground beside him. The background is a dark, undefined space with a suggestion of foliage at the upper right. The figure is placed low in the canvas, with empty space above him. The palette is warm: yellows, reds, and browns, with dark shadows. Manet was twenty-eight in 1860. He had never been to Spain. His knowledge of Spanish painting came from reproductions and from the Louvre's collection of Velazquez and Goya. Spanish subjects were popular in Paris in the 1850s, and Manet adopted them as a way to align himself with the realist tradition of Velazquez rather than the academic tradition of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The Spanish Singer was his first painting on a Spanish theme. The Salon of 1861 was Manet's debut. The Spanish Singer was accepted by the jury and hung in a prominent position. It received positive reviews and won an honorable mention. The success gave Manet the confidence to continue painting in his own direction, which would lead to the controversies of the following years with Olympia and the Dejeuner sur l'herbe. Oil on canvas, 147.3 by 114.3 centimeters. Manet used broad, flat strokes for the costume and finer marks for the face and hands. The dark background is thinly painted, allowing the weave of the canvas to show through. The warm palette and figure subject make this painting suitable for a living room or study with warm-toned walls. It pairs with wood furniture and earth-toned textiles. The 18x24 framed version in a red oak frame complements the painting's warm colors. The painting entered the Met's collection through the Havemeyer bequest in 1929. This is a public domain artwork (CC0), from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 24x36 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.