File:Polichinelle (BM 1949,0411.3342).jpg

Height: 471 millimetres (max.; with text)

Height: 428 millimetres

Width: 300 millimetres (max.)

(Text from 'From Manet to Toulouse-Lautrec', BM 1978, cat.22) Polichinelle (Punch) was a traditional figure in the Commedia dell'Arte, and the subject had been popularized in France in several works by Meissonier. A visitor to Manet's studio in December 1873 saw an oil of Polichinelle completed (presumably RW213) and watched Manet doing a watercolour of another Polichinelle who was posing for him. It was presumably this last watercolour which was exhibited in the Salon of 1874, no.2357, (RW563, now in a private collection). This lithograph is a precise reproduction of the watercolour. We know from a letter of Manet to Prunaire that he had intended to exhibit the lithograph as well at the Salon; this did not in fact happen, but JulietWilson Bareau has discovered that both the editions of the print were published in 1874. It had previously been thought that the first edition of 25 impressions (of which this is one) belonged to 1876, and that the second edition was posthumous and that new colour stones had been made. In an article published in 1923 the nephew of Lemercier's printer gave an account of the history of the print: he said that it was originally intended to be published in an edition of 8,000 to be distributed as a free gift to the subscribers to Le Temps; the police however thought that it was a caricature of Marshall MacMahon, and banned the publication. MacMahon, known popularly as 'Maréchal Baton', led the army in the suppression of the Commune in 1871, and in 1873 was elected President of the Republic. There is confirmatory evidence in two letters of Manet (reprinted by Guerin, p.19) which show that on 10 May (nine days after the opening of the Salon), Manet was offering the stones to the editor of the 'Journal des Deux Mondes' for 2,000 francs. On 10 October he was still trying to find a buyer, and Lemercier, the printer, either had erased or was threatening to erase the stones. In 1876 Manet had still not paid Lemercier's bill. The fact that the print was to be a free handout with a magazine explains its exceptional nature in Manet's oeuvre. It puts it firmly in the context of nineteenth-century chromolithography, and shows that the position sometimes given to this print by historians as the forerunner of the revival of artistic colour lithography is misleading. The limited edition was signed by the artist on superior paper, while the unlimited edition used ordinary paper. One further question is how far the print is indeed by Manet. The print is a very precise facsimile of the drawing, and this is quite foreign to Manet's usual way of working. Moreover a comparison between the second and the third states reveals numerous small adjustments to the black base stone, while major adjustments have been made to the colours; thus in the second state there is a beige ground tone over which white highlights have been printed from a second stone, whereas in the third state both ground tone and highlights are replaced by a newly drawn beige stone against white paper. This reveals unmistakably the expert hand of the professional chromolithographer. Evidence to support these suspicions can be found in Manet's letter to Prunaire of 1874 where he says: 'Je voudrais bien qu'on s'occupe de mes pierres Polichinelle . . . Un mot pour me dire un jour d'essai'. This strongly suggests that the artisans were to hurry up and prepare the stones, and then Manet would come and correct the proofs - exactly as we find between the second and third states. Prunaire himself is only known to have been active as a reproductive wood-engraver; in this same year he did a wood-engraved reproduction of 'Le Chemin de Fer' (Guérin 89), Manet's only other exhibit in the 1874 Salon, and of another drawing by Manet (Guérin 90), of which Guérin owned a proof corrected by Manet. Perhaps in this case Manet only did the black stone, while the colour stones were professionally prepared from the original watercolour. Unquestionably it belongs to a time when Manet was trying to broadcast his art as widely as possible. 1874 was the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, when the Impressionists, in despair at their failure to get into the Salon, decided to try to establish themselves by holding a group exhibition; Manet, although equally unfortunate in the Salon, refused to participate, still wanting official respectability as an artist. Probably he intended these reproductions to serve the same purpose for himself as the exhibition served for the Impressionists. The inscription was supplied by Theodore de Banville at Manet's request. Mallarmé and Cros, among others, also contributed verses which were not used.

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