Around 1880, drawing and pastel occupied a central place in Édouard Manet’s artistic practice. In the final years of his life, increasingly limited by illness, he produced a substantial group of works on paper, which featured numerous portraits of women. Of the approximately sixty pastels of female sitters attributed to Manet, the vast majority date from this late period.
Our drawing, executed around 1880, belongs to this intense moment of graphic experimentation. Many of the women he portrayed moved within the Parisian social circles he frequented, notably Marie Colombier, a well-known figure in the Parisian demi-monde. Colombier, who pursued a career as an actress before becoming a novelist, enjoyed notoriety from the 1860s and moved within prestigious literary circles. She was later involved in a public scandal when she was famously horsewhipped by the actress Sarah Bernhardt following the publication of a malicious libel.
Our portrait is preparatory for Manet’s pastel Portrait of Marie Colombier (fig. 1), also executed in 1880. In the pastel drawing the interplay between finish and suggestion echoes the economy and immediacy present in our drawing. On our sheet, Manet concentrates on the sitter’s head, capturing her features and expression with swift, searching lines. The lightly sketched neck and the loosely spiralling strokes framing it underscore the provisional nature of the sketch, which is concerned less with finish than with the immediate recording of pose and character. Such drawings functioned as a crucial preparatory stage in Manet’s working process, which allowed him to refine likeness and expression before moving to pastel.
Our Portrait of Marie Colombier was formerly in the collection of Edgar Degas, and it was sold during the posthumous sale of his collection on 27 March 1918 at the Galerie Georges Petit. Manet and Degas were closely associated from the early 1860s and moved within the same artistic circle frequented by Henri Fantin-Latour, Berthe Morisot, and Stéphane Mallarmé. Degas owned several paintings and works on paper by Manet, which he retained throughout his life.