Young Lady in 1866

Manet painted this portrait in 1866, the same year he submitted Woman with a Parrot to the Salon. The model is believed to be Victorine Meurent, the same woman who posed for Olympia and the Dejeuner sur l'herbe. The young woman stands full-length, facing the viewer, in a pale pink dress with a long train. She wears a small black hat and carries a parasol in her left hand. A small dog sits at her feet on the lower right. The background is a flat, undifferentiated grey, with no setting or context. The figure is placed slightly left of center, with the dog providing a counterweight on the right. The canvas is large, roughly 74 by 44 inches. Manet was thirty-four in 1866. He had just survived the scandal of Olympia at the 1865 Salon and was painting prolifically. He submitted both this painting and Woman with a Parrot to the 1866 Salon. The jury rejected Young Lady in 1866 but accepted Woman with a Parrot. Manet exhibited the rejected painting in his own studio, where it was seen by Emile Zola, who would write a major defense of Manet the following year. The flat background and frontal pose in this painting show Manet's debt to Velazquez, whose work he had studied in the Louvre. The lack of setting was controversial in 1866, when academic convention required a narrative context for figure painting. Manet's refusal to provide one was part of his broader challenge to Salon conventions. Oil on canvas, 185.1 by 128.6 centimeters. Manet used smooth, broad strokes for the dress and looser marks for the face and hands. The grey background is a single thin layer, applied with a wide brush. The large vertical format and pale palette of this painting make it suitable for a room with high ceilings and light walls. It works well in an entryway or formal living room. The 18x24 framed version in a white frame suits a bright interior. 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.