黑料不打烊

The first Art Institute exhibition devoted exclusively to 脡douard Manet in over 50 years focuses on the transformation of the artist鈥檚 style in his later years.

By the late 1870s, when this exhibition begins, 脡douard Manet had become recognized as a painter of modern life. He had long looked to historical subjects and style for inspiration but in the 1870s grew more and more immersed in the now鈥攅ventually proposing a radical new alignment of modern art with fashionable femininity. While he continued to pursue highly finished, heroically scaled paintings intended for the Salon throughout these later years (a time also marked by health problems and limited mobility), he simultaneously approached smaller works more fluidly and spontaneously, taking up pastel and watercolor while unapologetically embracing beauty and visual pleasure.

This exhibition is the first to focus on this important period in the artist鈥檚 career, bringing together an impressive array of portraits of fashionable women鈥攆avorite actresses and models, bourgeois women of his acquaintance, and his wife鈥攁s well as intimate male friends. Among these are two striking paintings, one of the young model-actress Jeanne Demarsy and the other of his friend M茅ry Laurent. Called Jeanne (Spring) and Autumn (M茅ry Laurent), the pair comprises the only two completed works in a project to portray the seasons through paintings of stylishly attired women.

Supplementing this display are the delicate and rarely seen letters Manet wrote to his friends, featuring exquisite illustrations of fruits and flowers; garden pictures, which themselves often feature elegantly attired women; and flower studies, consummate expressions of Manet鈥檚 favorite subjects at the end of his life. Punctuating the presentation are large-scale multifigure paintings, including In the Conservatory and Boating, both shown in the 1879 Salon, which focus attention on modern social and gender relations. Together these works showcase both Manet鈥檚 responsiveness to the moment and the continual flowering of his artistry.