Ritratto di Alice Legouvé

This is a small and private thing, barely the size of a sheet of paper. Manet made it in 1875, a loose and tender portrait of a young woman named Alice Legouve settled into an armchair. He treated it more as a warm sketch of a face than a formal likeness, the kind of picture painters make of people they know rather than of paying clients. At this point Manet had spent years being mocked in the press for his larger, bolder canvases. This one he painted quickly, on a scrap of canvas about the size of two open hands, keeping the brushwork soft and rapid throughout.