The Amazon

A tall black hat rises against a blue background. Beneath its curved brim, a pale face turns slightly to one side, while a brown gloved hand is raised before a dark bodice. Édouard Manet’s The Amazon makes riding clothes the basis of a portrait whose most solid forms coexist with broad, open strokes of paint.

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid calls the work Horsewoman, Full-Face (L’Amazone) and dates it to about 1882. It is an unfinished oil painting, 73 × 52 cm.^[1] The title describes a woman in riding dress; no horse appears in this composition.

The Tall Hat and the Turned Face

The hat occupies an unusually large share of the space above the shoulders. Its crown widens towards the top, while the brim projects sharply on either side of the head. A pale vertical passage interrupts the black front. Near the brim, smaller light marks describe the curve without outlining every part of it equally.

The surrounding blue makes this dark shape easy to follow. At the upper left, loose pale strokes approach the hat’s edge; at the right, the background becomes lighter and more open. The hat remains a strongly defined object even where its neighbouring colours have a much less settled appearance.

Below it, the face is built from cream, pink, brown and small touches of red. The cheek on the viewer’s left spreads into a broad light area. Across the nose and around the eyes, shorter marks turn the surface and establish the features. The mouth is a compact reddish shape set among pale strokes that remain clearly separate.

Dark hair gathers beneath the brim. Its broken lower edge crosses the forehead and draws attention to the eyes. One ear remains visible at the left, while the opposite side of the head merges more closely with the hair. These unequal boundaries give the face its particular angle rather than presenting it as a symmetrical shape beneath the hat.

Black Clothing and a Raised Glove

The bodice forms a large dark mass across the middle of the canvas. A narrow white edge separates the high collar from the neck. Just below, a small gold-coloured fastening creates a bright point near the centre. Lower down, an irregular white shape interrupts the black fabric on the chest.

Manet distributes these accents sparingly. The white areas are small enough for the dark clothing to remain dominant, yet each catches the eye because of the surrounding contrast. Between them, long areas of the bodice receive comparatively little internal description. The dress holds together through its silhouette and changes of tone.

The raised glove introduces warmer colour. Ochre, brown and pale strokes describe its knuckles, fingers and folds, with the cuff widening towards the wrist. The hand rests before the upper body without concealing much of the dark garment. Its bent shape adds a compact movement beside the more upright collar and hat.

The other arm bends towards the waist. Here, the sleeve, hand and surrounding ground are less firmly separated. A slender diagonal implement crosses the lower part of the image. Together, these features extend the pose beyond the relatively concentrated description of the face and raised glove.

The two sides of the figure are also handled differently. One shoulder has a clearer, more continuous contour; the other is interrupted by visible strokes and adjacent patches of background.

A Horsewoman Role for a Model

In French, amazone can mean a horsewoman, as the corresponding titles of both Manet’s picture and an earlier Courbet portrait indicate.^[1][2] In Manet’s canvas, the role is conveyed through the hat, gloves and fitted riding clothes. The cropped body and absent horse concentrate attention on the appearance of the rider.

The Thyssen’s account, drawing on the inventory made after Manet’s death, identifies the model as the daughter of a bookseller in the rue de Moscou. It also reports that the artist Emmanuel Gallard Lépinay lent the riding outfit.^[1] The costume was therefore part of the arrangement made for the portrait, rather than proof that the sitter habitually rode in it.

That distinction gives the painting a place among Manet’s images of people assuming recognisable social roles. A real woman posed before him, but her clothes supplied a public identity that the title makes more prominent than her name. Her individual features and the general type of a fashionable horsewoman occupy the same image.

Courbet and the Riding Habit

The Thyssen proposes Gustave Courbet’s Woman in a Riding Habit (L’Amazone) as a possible precedent.^[1] Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the earlier oil is dated about 1855–59 and measures 115.6 × 89.2 cm. The Met describes the sitter’s identity as unconfirmed.^[2]

Courbet also places a woman in dark riding clothes against sky and foliage. A pale collar and white gloves stand out against the dress. Her body turns in three-quarter view, and her head inclines downwards. The broad black garment supplies a continuous shape, with the hands describing separate movements across and below the waist.

Manet brings the face nearer to a frontal position. His hat is taller and more assertive, while the brown glove rises closer to the chest. The blue around the head is more visibly broken into broad strokes. Looking between the two works reveals shared costume elements organised through different poses and different degrees of surface description.

The comparison also changes the scale of the encounter. Courbet’s larger canvas includes more of the standing body. Manet crops his figure more closely, so the hat, face and raised hand occupy a greater proportion of the image. The riding habit remains recognisable in each, but the concentration of attention shifts.

An Unfinished Work for the Salon

According to the Thyssen’s reading of the posthumous inventory, Manet intended this canvas for the Salon of 1883.^[1] Its unfinished state leaves that ambition visible alongside the differing degrees of definition across the picture. The face and large dark forms have considerable presence, while lower passages and parts of the setting remain more lightly developed.

The painting belongs to Manet’s final years, when he continued to work on portraits of fashionable women. Here, the abbreviated background gives very little sense of a specific location. Upright green and dark marks suggest foliage around the lower figure, but the blue behind the head becomes an extensive field of colour in its own right.

The Thyssen records two other late treatments of the horsewoman motif, with variations in pose and framing.^[1]

Was the Horsewoman Intended as Summer

The Amazon has sometimes been identified as Summer, but the Thyssen treats that connection as uncertain.^[1] The proposed association comes from Manet’s incomplete project to represent the seasons through fashionable women.

The Getty’s account identifies Jeanne or Spring and Autumn, the portrait of Méry Laurent, as the two pictures painted for the cycle. Antonin Proust reportedly commissioned the series, although it remains unclear whether Manet conceived the scheme before Spring or developed it after that painting’s success at the Salon of 1882.^[3]

The seasonal idea offers a context for the horsewoman’s fashionable appearance, rather than a secure second identity for the canvas. The riding outfit can be understood on its own terms: a carefully selected costume that links an individual face with a contemporary mode of dress.

Another Amazon and the Portrait in Madrid

Manet also painted an earlier, different Amazon, now at MASP in São Paulo. Its full title is The Amazon—Portrait of Marie Lefébure, and the museum dates it to 1870–75. It depicts a mounted woman and belongs to a separate group of equestrian portraits.^[4] Its sitter and history should remain distinct from those of the Madrid horsewoman.

The Thyssen records that the unfinished frontal portrait was included in Manet’s posthumous exhibition at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1884.^[1]