Marguerite de Conflans

Marguerite de Conflans is an oval oil-on-canvas portrait by Édouard Manet, dated to around 1876. It is one of five portraits the painter made of this sitter, the earliest from 1873, which suggests that she held his attention for several years. Manet reportedly asked her to pose again and again, and they met at receptions organised by his wife, which she attended with her mother. The sitter is seated and reading, a pose that gives the picture a quiet, intimate air.

What stands out is the use of a mirror that shows the figure from several angles at once. Manet rarely used this device, and here it recalls Ingres and A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, which also features a mirror. Multiplying viewpoints in this way turns a seemingly simple portrait into an exercise in composition that rewards close looking.

The painting's history is well documented. It first belonged to Mademoiselle d'Angély, the sitter's daughter, who left it to the Louvre in 1941. It entered the museum's collection officially in 1945 and was assigned to the Musée d'Orsay when that museum opened in 1986. Later that year it was exchanged for Isidore Pils's The Death of a Sister of Charity, which came from the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, and today the portrait hangs in that museum's red salon. A restoration in 2005 allowed the canvas's structure to be studied: its edges were worn, but it remained supple. The wooden frame does not appear to be the original.

Painter

Édouard Manet

Date

1876

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

54 × 65 cm

Museum

Musée des Augustins, Toulouse

Genre

portrait

Depicts

sitting, reading, Marguerite de Conflans, mirror, woman, Henri Cordier, man

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