Impressionism1866

The Fifer

Édouard Manet

Curator's Eye

"The revolutionary treatment of the background, devoid of a horizon line and spatial markers, constitutes Manet’s most daring gesture. The character seems to float in an undefined space, a technique inspired by Japanese prints and Velázquez’s court portraits. This spatial vacuum forces the gaze to concentrate exclusively on the physical presence and colorful contrasts of the model."

An icon of modernity where Manet radicalizes his style by placing a young musician of the Imperial Guard against a void, monochrome background. This work scandalized the 1866 Salon through its lack of traditional perspective and its "flat" treatment of the figure. It is the affirmation of a painting liberated from narration to become a pure visual object.

Analysis

The Fifer represents a "boy-soldier" from the 1st Regiment of the Imperial Guard Grenadiers, sent to Manet by Commander Lejosne. The work belongs to a transition period where Manet, deeply marked by his trip to Spain, sought to translate the immediacy of vision. By refusing the subtle gradients of chiaroscuro, he imposed flats of vivid colors that simplified the form to its essence. This approach was perceived by his contemporaries as an insult to academic "good taste," which demanded illusionistic depth. Zola, a fervent defender of Manet, was one of the few to understand that this "lack of relief" was a quest for optical truth. The painter does not seek to tell a story or exalt military virtue, but to capture light as it hits a colored surface. The subject becomes a pretext for the pictorial exercise: the texture of the red cloth of the trousers, the shine of the white braid, and the gloss of the black leather shoes are the true protagonists of the canvas. The influence of Diego Velázquez is crucial here, particularly the portrait of "Pablillos de Valladolid." Manet wrote to Baudelaire during his stay at the Prado that it was the most amazing piece of painting he had seen, stating that "the background disappears; it is air that surrounds the fellow." In The Fifer, he pushes this intuition to its peak: air is no longer represented by atmospheric nuances, but by an absence of decor that makes the character monumental despite his small size. Finally, the work marks the birth of the modern gaze. By treating a "banal" subject with the dignity of a royal portrait, Manet subverts the hierarchy of genres. He thus announces Impressionism and, later, Abstraction, by suggesting that the value of a painting lies in its internal structure and chromatic choices rather than in fidelity to the real world. The Fifer is a silent manifesto against anecdote and the picturesque.

The Secret

One of the most fascinating secrets lies in the identity of the model. Although a young musician did indeed pose, Manet used the features of Victorine Meurent, his favorite model seen in "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" and "Olympia," to feminize or at least idealize the boy's face. This blending of genders and identities is a constant in Manet's work, who loved to blur the lines of representation. The painting was rejected by the 1866 Salon with such vehemence that it caused Émile Zola’s resignation from the newspaper L’Événement, following his passionate articles defending the work. The jury described the painting as a "bazaar toy" or a "popular print" (image d'Épinal), unable to see in this simplification a major aesthetic breakthrough. For them, the absence of a cast shadow on the ground (barely suggested by a slight darkening under the feet) was an unforgivable technical error. Modern X-rays of the canvas revealed that Manet had initially planned a slightly different composition, notably in the position of the instrument and the hands. These pentimenti show that this apparent simplicity was the result of laborious synthesis. Manet sought the perfect line, the one that would allow the removal of all superfluous detail to keep only the graphic power of the silhouette. Another secret concerns the color palette. Manet deliberately limited his tones to create maximum visual impact: the deep black of the jacket, the bright red of the trousers, and the off-white of the background. This chromatic minimalism was extremely expensive at the time, as high-quality black and red pigments had to be applied with surgical precision to avoid appearing muddy. The result is a purity of tone that had no equivalent in 19th-century French painting.

Join Premium.

Unlock

Quiz

Which specific work by Velázquez, admired by Manet at the Prado Museum, directly inspired the radical absence of decor and the effect of immersion in "the air" in The Fifer?

Discover

The Fifer

The Dance Class

Luncheon of the Boating Party