Boy Blowing Bubbles
Boy Blowing Bubbles | |
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Artist | Édouard Manet |
Year | 1867 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 100.5 cm × 81.4 cm (39.6 in × 32.0 in) |
Location | Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon |
Boy Blowing Bubbles (also known as The Soap Bubbles; French: Les Bulles de savon) is an 1867 oil-on-canvas painting by Édouard Manet, who gave it its present title. It is now in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, in Lisbon, whose founder acquired it via André Weil in New York in November 1943.
Description
The painting depicts Léon Koelin-Leenhoff, the illegitimate son (possibly fathered by Manet) of Manet's future wife, Suzanne Leenhoff.[1] The painting shows him aged 15 blowing soap bubbles, a traditional symbol of the brevity of life.[2]
Manet's teacher Thomas Couture had painted a work with the same subject in 1859 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), but it differs from Manet's naturalistic treatment by the inclusion of numerous narrative and symbolic details, such as school books and a laurel wreath.[3] Manet's painting has more in common with an 18th-century prototype, Soap Bubbles by Chardin (1737; Washington, National Gallery of Art).[1] While Manet's use of a nearly monochrome palette and dark background show the influence of the old masters he admired, the contemporary clothing and roughly impasted surface of Boy Blowing Bubbles are consistent with Manet's Realist determination to paint modern life.[1]
Boy Blowing Bubbles is one of 17 works painted by Manet in the 1860s and 1870s depicting young Léon; among the others are Boy Carrying a Sword and Luncheon in the Studio.[1]
See also
- List of paintings by Édouard Manet
- 1867 in art
References
- v
- t
- e
- List of paintings
- The Barque of Dante (1854–1858)
- Christ the Gardener (1856–1859)
- The Absinthe Drinker (1859)
- Spanish Cavaliers (1859)
- Portrait of Madame Brunet (1860)
- Portrait of Monsieur and Madame Manet (1860)
- The Spanish Singer (1860)
- Boy Carrying a Sword (1861)
- La Nymphe surprise (1861)
- The Street Singer (1862)
- Music in the Tuileries (1862)
- The Old Musician (1862)
- Portrait of Victorine Meurent (1862)
- Mademoiselle V. in the Costume of an Espada (1862)
- Little Lange (1862)
- The Luncheon on the Grass (1863)
- La Négresse (1863)
- Olympia (1863)
- Young Man Dressed as a Majo (1863)
- The Dead Man (1864))
- The Bullfight (1864–65)
- The Dead Christ with Angels (1864)
- The Kearsarge at Boulogne (1864)
- The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama (1864)
- The Races at Longchamp (1865)
- Jesus Insulted by the Soldiers (1865)
- Bullfight (1865–66)
- Bullfight – Death of the Bull (1865)
- The Matador Saluting (1866)
- The Fifer (1866)
- A Young Lady in 1866 (1866)
- The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1867)
- Portrait of Emile Zola (1868)
- Boy Blowing Bubbles (1868)
- Madame Manet at the Piano (1867–68)
- The Balcony (1868)
- Luncheon in the Studio (1868)
- The Reading (1868)
- The Port of Boulogne by Moonlight (1868)
- Departure of the Folkestone Steamer (1869)
- The Brioche (1870)
- Repose (1870)
- The Funeral (1870)
- Effect of Snow on Petit-Montrouge (1870)
- Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets (1872)
- Tarring a Boat (1873)
- The Railway (1873)
- The Croquet Game (1873)
- Masked Ball at the Opera House (1873)
- Argenteuil (1874)
- Berthe Morisot with a Fan (1874)
- Claude Monet Painting in his Studio (1874)
- Boating (1874)
- Portrait of Marguerite de Conflans (c. 1876)
- Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé (1876)
- Le Suicidé (1877–1881)
- Nana (1877)
- Plum Brandy (c. 1877)
- The Rue Mosnier Dressed with Flags (1878)
- Blonde Woman with Bare Breasts (c. 1878)
- Chez Tortoni (c. 1878–1880)
- Georges Clemenceau (Fort Worth) (1879)
- Georges Clemenceau (Paris) (1879)
- Chez le Père Lathuille (1879)
- Portrait of Marguerite Gauthier-Lathuille (1879)
- In the Conservatory (1879)
- Madame Manet in the Conservatory (1879)
- The Waitress (1879)
- Corner of a Café-Concert (1879)
- The Café-Concert (1879)
- Self-Portrait with Palette (1879)
- A Bundle of Asparagus (1880)
- A Sprig of Asparagus (1880)
- Portrait of Countess Albazzi (1880)
- Portrait of Monsieur Pertuiset the Lion-Hunter (1881)
- Dead Eagle Owl (1881)
- The Rabbit (1881)
- Rochefort's Escape (1881)
- Spring (1881)
- Autumn (1882)
- A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)
- The House at Rueil (1882)
- Flowers in a Crystal Vase (1882)
- White Lilacs in a Glass Vase (1882)
- A Studio at Les Batignolles (1870 painting)
- Bazille's Studio (1870 painting)
- The Impressionists (2006 series)