The Tragic Actor (Rouvière as Hamlet)

Manet painted this life-size figure in 1866, a year after his friend the actor Philibert Rouvière had died. Rouvière had been famous above all for one role, Hamlet, and Manet shows him in the prince's mourning black, hands gathered around his cloak, caught in the hesitation the part is known for. Manet had lately been to Madrid and fallen hard for Velázquez, whose full-length figures stand alone against a bare, shadowy ground, and you can see that lesson in the plain dark backdrop here, with no room drawn around him at all. The picture was a memorial to a dead friend, and the Salon jury turned it away.