El cantor español

Paris in 1860 was mad for all things Spanish. The emperor had married a Spanish countess, Spanish dancers filled the theatres, and a young Manet, who had never set foot in Spain, painted this guitar player entirely in his studio from a hired model and a wardrobe of costumes he kept on hand. When it reached the Salon of 1861 the crowd loved it so much the jury moved it down to a better spot on the wall. Look closely and the fiction shows through. The singer is left-handed, yet his guitar is strung for a right-hander, and his fingers do not really sit on a chord. What carried the picture was the paint itself, the loose dark handling Manet had taken from the Spaniard he most admired, Velazquez, whose work he had so far seen only in copies and prints.