Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet’s prints and paintings of Spanish subjects enjoyed wide critical and popular success in the 1860s through their evocation of the work of past artists like Diego Velasquez and through the picturesque charm of foreign customs and attire. Unlike the peasant girl depicted in the Isidore Pils watercolor to the right, however, this young man is not a genuine Spaniard, but a model dressed in this role by Manet. His costume mixes Spanish hat and shoes with a jacket typical of Marseilles and common Parisian pants. Furthermore, his awkward grasp of the guitar is that of a left-handed person holding an instrument strung for a righthanded
musician. Manet likely constructed the entire scene using a local model, adapting the tradition of costume painting as a vehicle for his preferred dark palette and aesthetic goals.