Victoria Meran has repeatedly appeared on the canvases of the artist – we see her delicate image in such masterpieces as “Olympia”, “Street singer”, “Breakfast on the grass”, “Railway” and “In a matador costume”, in 1868, Manet writes household picture “Reading”, where his beloved model again appears.
At the wide window, which is guessed behind a thin flying curtain, sits a young girl with high cheekbones and dark brown hair pulled up. The flickering of white noticeably transforms the whole composition – both the dress with the neckline, the sofa, and the curtain are painted in the same color, but the artist skillfully “colored” it with the help of glare. The girl is focused, she carefully listens to the reader, whose figure protrudes from the dark upper right corner of the picture.
Just looking at the picture, it is impossible not to state – this is pure impressionism. Only this artistic pictorial aesthetics could so delicately transform reality, making from its usual plot breathtakingly beautiful masterpieces. The paradox is that, being carried away by the work of Renoir and his almost namesake Claude Monet, Edouard Manet refused to classify himself as an impressionist movement, meanwhile today it is no secret that the painter was at the very beginning of this trend.
Wide, but short strokes that create dynamics, impulsive lines, the play of light highlights on the dress, the “free” breath of the painting space – all this, the most true features of impressionism. The author as if snatched one frame from the universal flow of action and captured this fragile moment, turning it into a magical moment, where it is slowly flowing speech from the mouth of a young man, the wind plays with the floors of curtains and flowing dress of a young beautiful nymph whose beauty can argue with the beauty of this pastoral of the moment.
By the way, the fate of this beauty was very unenviable – she never escaped poverty, she passionately dreamed about, Mane painted other lovely women for a long time, beauty began to leave, and Victoria Meran earned her living by singing on the streets and received a nickname ” Velcro for begging in cafes and pubs. And that magical time, when a talented artist admired her beauty, moving her image from one canvas to another, long gone, leaving only memories and immortal canvases.
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