An Enigmatic Chalk Drawing, Rediscovered in a Private Italian Collection, Has Been Identified as the Long-Lost Work of Édouard Manet

As one of the 19th century’s foremost painters of everyday life—scenes of regular people in cafés, railways, bars and more—the famed French modernist Édouard Manet defied tradition and found inspiration in the gritty, unvarnished streets of major European cities. One of his largest paintings, The Old Musician (1862), embodies this ethos at a scale usually reserved for famous or historical figures. The eight-foot-wide frame is filled with an aging violinist surrounded by a varied crowd—a barefoot girl clutching an infant, two young boys, a top-hatted ragpicker and a turbaned older man—all of whom, in an effort to highlight the humanity of the marginalized, are brought to the fore.

In the 1860s, the neighborhood was razed at the order of Emperor Napoleon III to pave new boulevards. Now, a rediscovered drawing sheds possible new light on the history of the painting’s creation. As was first reported by the Guardian’s Dalya Alberge, the small red-chalk sketch, long held in a private art collection in northern Italy, has been newly attributed to Manet.

The drawing, spotted recently by art historian Francesco Baccanelli, is believed to be a study for The Old Musician. It depicts a crouching young girl who resembles both the girl in that painting and a woman, bent in a similar pose, in another Manet work, Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (1863). I’m not sure when the last unpublished drawing by Manet was discovered, but it has definitely been many years.” The chalk drawing is similar to others attributed to Manet, and historians have discerned some of the artist’s signature styles, such as “the abrupt transitions between light and shadow, and the peculiar plump, tapered fingers—little figural tics that are very characteristic of Manet,” Beeny tells the outlet.

An ultraviolet analysis of the roughly 8-by-7-inch sketch also revealed evidence of the artist’s studio stamp in its right-hand corner. But the drawing also poses new questions, especially for experts less confident about its ties to existing works. The key detail is the box Manet drew around the child, an example of “squaring,” which typically indicates that the artist was pleased with the work and intended to transfer it to canvas.

But the portrait of the crouching girl doesn’t exist in any Manet painting. As for the identity of the child, Beeny and Baccanelli speculate that—even though the sketch seems to show a girl—Manet may have turned to a young boy named Alexandre, who cleaned his brushes and workspace, for inspiration. The two experts have written a full scholarly review of the drawing and its links to Manet and his work for the forthcoming October issue of the Burlington Magazine, a monthly art journal.

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.