“… Many who had previously hesitated now join. For example, Theodore Dure, who admits that he was unfair to the painter in his brochure published last year. Unexpectedly, Manet suggests Dure to write his portrait – for Dure it is a good case to better understand the artist works.
Having depicted his friend to his full height – a gray suit stands out against a gray background – Manet, striving for a variety of light colors – they have to break this monochrome – introduces several elements whose presence in the picture is due to purely plastic targets. Next to the model, he writes a small still life, gradually enriching it more and more: under a stool with a garnet-colored pillow, he throws a green book; then it places a lacquered tray on a pillow, and a carafe of water, a glass, a spoon, a knife on it; and finally covers the glass with lemon. “Before me,” says Dure, “the process of implementing his instinctive, as if organic manner of seeing and feeling, was going on.” Manet finishes this work at the beginning of summer, before leaving for Boulogne, where he expects to spend six weeks to rest and to take his hands as rarely as possible: he had been nervous for too long and was very tired. Received a portrait as a gift, Dure is delighted with the canvas and immediately hangs it at home. “This is truly a painting!” he exclaims. Dure would like to thank Mane somehow. Having conceived a certain trick, he wrote to the artist in July: “You put your signature on the picture in a lighted place, and therefore your name immediately catches the eye.
Knowing human stupidity, and especially towards you, I am sure that everyone who came to see the name “Mane” will start laughing and denouncing you, not having time to pay attention either to the painting or to the glorious small presented here. Therefore, it seems to me that it would be better to transfer the signature from the illuminated place, and maybe, in general, to remove it or write in the shade and very illegible. In doing so, you would give me the opportunity to make admire the painting, its painting. I could say that this is the work of Goya, Reno or Fortuny. Then I would reveal the secret, and the bourgeois caught at the bait would be forced to bite his tongue. Think of my offer. To spend the bourgeois, all means are good. “Manet agrees: he writes his name upside down…”
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