Young Woman in Oriental Garb

Manet painted this woman in Oriental costume around 1871, the year Paris came out of the Prussian siege and the Commune, and he gave it to a friend, the journalist Adrien Marx. The dedication he wrote beside his signature, to his friend Adrien Marx, was later painted over. The picture passed to Marx's nephew Roger, an art critic, and by 1928 it belonged to Max Silberberg, a Jewish businessman and collector in Breslau. In 1932 Silberberg consigned it to the Paris dealer Paul Rosenberg, who bought it outright in 1937. The Nazis deported Silberberg and his wife Johanna in 1942, and they were murdered, presumably at Auschwitz. The Zurich industrialist Emil Bührle bought the painting from Rosenberg in New York in 1953. Silberberg's heirs saw the sale as a result of persecution, while the Bührle foundation dated his decision to sell to before 1933. In April 2025 the two sides settled, and the painting stays on view at the Kunsthaus Zürich.