Description

This painting and Beggar with Oysters were conceived as companion pieces. Édouard Manet exhibited them together in 1872 alongside paintings of an absinthe drinker and a ragpicker (a collector and reseller of discarded fabric and other refuse) under the collective title The Philosophers. When Manet made the paintings, these “beggars,” as they were then referred to, were being pushed to the physical and social margins of Paris as the city rapidly redeveloped to make way for more bourgeois neighborhoods. Although he was born into an upper-class family, Manet was an outsider to the established French art circles and likely identified with these alienated subjects.

Provenance

The artist, until 1872; sold to Durand-Ruel, Paris, January 1872, for 1,000 or 1,500 francs [per Durand-Ruel and Durand-Ruel, 2011, 284–85]; sold to Jean-Baptiste Faure (d. 1914), Paris, November 13, 1882, along with two other paintings for 5,750 francs (known as “Philosophies”) [per the Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book for 1877 (as no. 1189) and in the stock book for 1880–84 (as no. 1171, Le Mendiant, and also as no. 2628, Le Philosophe); copy of archival reference in curatorial object file]; sold to Durand-Ruel, Paris, December 31, 1898, for 12,000 francs [per Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book for 1891 (no. 4934); copy of archival reference in curatorial object file]; sold to Durand-Ruel, New York, May 1909 [per Durand-Ruel, New York, undated stock book (no. 3321), copy of archival reference in curatorial object file]; sold to The Art Institute of Chicago, February 17, 1911.