Young Woman Reclining in Spanish Costume

In the early 1860s Paris was gripped by a craze for all things Spanish, its dancers, bullfighters and guitars, and Manet, who loved Velazquez and Goya, leaned right into it. He posed a model in a man's Spanish costume, sprawled across a divan with one buckled shoe dangling and a cat at her feet. The reclining pose looks straight back to Goya's Clothed Maja, which Manet knew from prints. In the corner he inscribed a dedication, To my friend Nadar, that being Felix Tournachon, the celebrated photographer and balloonist who was a fixture of the same bohemian Paris. It was Nadar who, a dozen years later, would lend the Impressionists his studio for their very first exhibition.