Ambroise Vollard: How Manet Painted

"The Grand Canal, Venice" by Edouard Manet

One day Ambroise Vollard was having a fascinating conversation with artist Charles Toché: 'How did Manet paint?' I said. I remembered Cézanne saying, 'Manet spatters his tones on to the canvas.'' 'That expresses it,' Toché replied. 'It was not at all a linear process, but with rapid individual touches he scattered shadows, lights, reflections over the canvas with astonishing sureness, and his layout was made.'

'I remember dining with him in a little restaurant opposite the Giudecca. The table was laid in an arbour covered with vines. A little opening in this arbour framed the lovely church of San Salvatore, whose pink tones contrasted with the glaucous green of the water and the black spindle-shapes of the gondolas. Manet observed and analysed the different colours taken on by each object as the light faded. He defined their values and told us how he would try to reproduce them, steeped in this ashy twilight greyness. Suddenly he got up, and taking his paintbox and a little canvas, he ran down to the quay. There, with a few strokes of the brush, he set up the distant church.'

'Any picture by Manet certainly suggests brushstrokes put down definitely, once for all,' I observed. 'Wait a bit!' said Toché, 'That was what I thought before I had seen him at work. Then I discovered how he laboured, on the contrary, to obtain what he wanted. The 'Pieux du Grand Canal' itself was begun I know not how many times. The gondola and gondolier held him up an incredible time. 'It's the devil,' he said, 'to suggest that a hat is stuck firmly on a head, or that a boat is built of planks cut and fitted according to geometrical laws!'' I could have listened all day to M. Tochè."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)