Ambroise Vollard: Manet's Plan for a Painting

"The Port of Bordeaux" by Edouard Manet

"In Venice Edouard Manet thought of nothing but painting. There was that Sunday in September, for instance, when I accompanied him to Mestre, where regattas were being held in the lagoon. Each racing gondola, with its rowers clad in blue and white, seemed a fold of an immense serpent. Lying on the cushions of our boat, a rug over his knees, one hand dragging in the water, Manet, from under his wife's parasol, described to us the plan of a picture he would like to paint of this regatta. Manet, who was considered an extravagant innovator at the École des Beaux Arts, had thought out this composition according to such classical rules that the statement he made of it to us would, I fancy, have delighted Poussin.

I noted down with the greatest care the incomparable lesson that I had just heard:

1. With a scene like this, so disconcerting and so complicated I must first select the characteristic episode, delimit my picture by an imaginary frame. The most salient things here are the masts with their multi-coloured bunting, the green, white and red of the Italian flag, the dark, undulating line of the barges laden with spectators, and the arrow-like line of the black-and-white gondolas fading away into the distance, with, at the top of the picture, the line of the water, the goal set for the races and the ethereal islands.
   
   
2.  I shall first try to distinguish the different values as they build themselves up logically according to their several planes in the atmosphere.
   
   
3. The lagoon, mirror of the sky, is the parvis of the barges and their passengers, of the masts, pennants, etc. It has its own colour - tints borrowed from the sky, the clouds, the crowd and the other objects reflected in it. There can be no question of wire-drawn lines in a moving thing such as this, but only of values which, rightly observed, will constitute the real volume, the unquestionable design.
   
   
4. The gondolas, the various barges with their mainly sombre colouring, and their reflections, constitute the foundation I shall lay on my parvis of the water.
   
   
5. The figures, seated or gesticulating, dressed in dark of brilliant colours, their parasols, their kerchiefs, their hats, form the crenelations, of differing values, which will provide the necessary foil and give their true character to the planes and the gondolas which I shall see through them.
   
   
6. The crowd, the competitors, the flags, the masts, will be built up into a mosaic of bright colours. I must try to catch the instantaneousness of the gestures, the shiver of the flags, the rocking of the masts.
   
   
7. On the horizon, far up, the Islands. . . The sails in the furthest distance will be merely hinted at their delicate, accurate colouring.
   
   
8. Lastly, the sky, like an immense glittering canopy, will envelop the whole scene, playing its light over figures and objects.
   
   
9. The painting must be light and direct. No tricks, and you will pray the God of good and honest painters to come to your aid.

To be continued

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