Irma Brunner

In his last years Manet was too ill to stand at a large canvas for long, his legs failing from the disease that would kill him in 1883, and he turned to pastel, which let him work quickly and seated. This is one result, a Viennese woman named Irma Brunner brought to him by his friend and model Mery Laurent. He shows her in sharp profile under a black hat, the kind of crisp silhouette he admired in Japanese prints, and sets the warm pink of her cheek and lips against that band of black. Pastel suited the softness of skin and the velvet of the hat, and he worked it here on a fine canvas rather than paper. He made a small group of these portraits of fashionable women, quiet and elegant, as his own strength was giving out.