Spanish Ballet

~In 1860, when sales of carte de visite portraits were soaring thanks to the mass production of views of contemporary celebrities, the Goncourt brothers discussed with the caricaturist Gavarni what the future direction of his portraits should be. Gavarni told them that “he wanted to...

Six years after Mary Cassatt left the toreadors of Seville to begin her career as a modern artist in Paris, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) arrived in Spain to paint the preliminary sketches for El jaleo, arguably the most famous American painting of Spanish life (fig. 5.1)....

~The earliest known works by Manet are copies after the masters—certainly an acceptable and appropriate beginning for an aspiring young artist. A great many of his copies must have disappeared, but what remains attests to Couture’s guidance toward masters of painterly technique : Titian, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Delacroix, and Velasquez...

~Before and after the show at Martinet's, Manet’s hispanicizing...

The editorialist of Le Temps was of the few who struck such a sour note in 1867. Like the visiting monarchs, most Parisians and visitors in the year of the Universal Exposition enjoyed to the fullest the various entertainments that made Paris “the theater of nations.” The appearance of Thérésa in a proper theater—she had been booked into...