123 - Édouard Manet (1832–1883)

Édouard Manet (1832–1883) Polichinelle. 1874. Lithograph. 310 x 430 [346 x 511 mm]. Guérin 79; Fisher 61. Color print. A very fine print on cream-colored vellum, in the final version, featuring Lemercier’s address and verses by Théodore de Banville at the bottom, exceptionally inscribed “to Léon Cladel” and signed in pencil. Full margins. AABM stamp (Lugt 3075). Léon Cladel (1835–1892) was a French novelist and short-story writer, a pioneer of the regionalist novel, and, like Manet, a defender of republican and socialist ideals. "The only color print created by Manet. The model was one of his friends, the painter Edmond André, who also appears in this costume in the painting titled *Masquerade Ball at the Opera* (Washington, National Gallery of Art), which was rejected by the Salon jury. Manet had launched a contest among poets to compose two lines of verse to be inscribed beneath the image of his Polichinelle. He chose the alexandrines by Théodore de Banville (1823–1891), who was considered one of the most eminent poets of his time. In 1876, 8,000 copies of the lithograph were printed to be offered as a bonus to subscribers of the newspaper *Le Temps*. The censors, believing they had recognized a caricature of General MacMahon, banned its distribution. (Source: INHA). Of the 8,000 prints, 1,500 were actually destroyed, according to Rançon, Lemercier’s nephew and the press operator during the print run. Le Polichinelle is, along with Le Gamin and Guerre civile, one of only three lithographs published during the artist’s lifetime.