Méry Laurent in a Black Hat

In 1882 Manet was 50, and walking had become hard for him. The illness that would kill him the following spring made long sessions at the easel exhausting, and pastel was quicker and far less tiring than oil. That year he drew the same young woman seven times, always head and shoulders, each time in a different outfit and hairstyle. She was Méry Laurent, born Anne-Rose Louviot in Nancy, who had come to Paris at 16 and met Manet in his studio in 1876. The poet Stéphane Mallarmé was devoted to her as well. The Dijon museum points out that this sheet matches how people described her, with very pale skin and golden hair under the black hat of the title. Manet laid the pastel on canvas rather than paper. Albert Robin, a Paris physician born in Dijon, bought it from Manet himself, and it came to the city's museum under his will in 1930.