Interpretive Resource

Shortly after the critics had vilified his submissions to the Salon of 1865, Edouard Manet embarked on a long-contemplated trip to Spain, where he was overwhelmed by the works of Baroque artist Diego Velázquez in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Upon his return to Paris, he set about producing two large canvases depicting beggar-philosophers, both of which are in the Art Institute’s collection.

The notion of the social outcast possessing rare insight gained a new currency in nineteenth-century France. Ragpickers (nocturnal scavengers of garbage suitable for resale) held a particular fascination for Realist artists and writers, who saw these figures as resourceful, appealingly nonconformist members of the urban underworld. Manet’s "philosophers" of 1865–66 interpret this type in terms that are both historicist and innovative. Rendered in dark earth tones and set against nondescript grounds, they resemble analogous paintings by Velázquez, but they are not straightforward essays in emulation. In Beggar with a Duffle Coat (Philosopher), the man’s hands are rendered with deliberate crudity, and the brown cloak is an impudent cascade of broad brush strokes. Manet was thus testing his own brand of fleet, summary handling against that of Velázquez, while simultaneously weighing his painterly options against the alternative representational mode of photography. This is perhaps most apparent in the way he blunted and stilled certain bravura passages, as if imitating the photographic blur.

The slapdash quality of Manet’s Beggar evokes a milieu regarded as threatening by government authorities. The figure’s outstretched hand is confrontational, almost a provocation to the viewer. Much about this disarming image remains inscrutable, but it seems likely that Manet’s depiction of a member of the "dangerous classes" in a monumental portrait format was intended to unsettle.