[Manet] - Lot 11

Lot 11
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Estimation :
500 - 1500 EUR
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Result : 1 639EUR
[Manet] - Lot 11
[Manet] Ɵ Édouard Manet's personal copy of the notarial deed between Édouard Manet, painter and his wife Suzanne Leenhof, and Jean-Baptiste Tournus, former jeweler, concerning a loan of fifty thousand francs. Deed drawn up by Maître Pascal, the Manet family's notary, on October 24, 1867, in the presence of his wife Suzanne Leenhof and the painter's two brothers, Eugène and Gustave Manet, 11 pages (30 x 27.5 cm): "Grosse en onze rôles contenant deux renvois et quatorze mots rayés comme nuls". Devauchelle folder. This unpublished deed, unknown in biographies, and of which this is the painter's copy, sheds new light on the costs of his 1867 private exhibition on the sidelines of the Universal Exhibition. It bears witness to a huge loan that mortgaged the family's land in Gennevilliers, and immediately follows the exhibition. This unpublished document, not mentioned in any study of Manet, bears witness to the painter's efforts to present his work against all odds, to cover the costs of his personal exhibition in the specially-built barrack on avenue de l'Alma (opposite Gustave Courbet's) in the spring of 1867, on the sidelines of the Universal Exhibition. Signed by him and his two brothers Eugène (who would marry Berthe Morisot) and Gustave, and Suzanne Leenhof, wife of Édouard, the document concerns a huge loan of 50,000 francs with interest at 5% p.a., secured by the mortgage on the family land (described here in detail) in Gennevilliers, where Manet's father had been mayor. The biographical caption refers only to a loan of 18,300 francs from Manet to his mother for this exhibition, but the present document - here a "grosse", i.e. a personal copy, Manet's own - shows that this was not the case, or at least that repayment to his mother must have been rapid. According to this document, the loan was due in 1875, but this date was exceeded by more than six years, to November 5, 1881, shortly before the painter's death in 1883... It was at the Alma exhibition in 1867 that Émile Zola took up the cause of the painter, then vilified by critics and mocked by the public, in a series of articles that cost him his position as columnist at L'Événement, and published his famous study of the painter, illustrated with the engraving of Olympia. Provenance: Édouard Manet.
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