The Funeral

A small funeral procession occupies the lower right of a large landscape. Dark figures gather behind a horse-drawn hearse, beneath green slopes, pale buildings and a grey-blue sky. In Édouard Manet’s The Funeral, the human event takes place within a much broader arrangement of trees, city silhouettes and moving cloud shapes.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York dates the painting to about 1867. An oil on canvas measuring 72.7 × 90.5 cm, it belongs to the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1909, and is numbered 10.36.^[1] The museum associates its subject, cautiously, with the funeral of Charles Baudelaire.

The Hearse at the Lower Right

The hearse forms a dark horizontal shape near the bottom of the painting. Its upper covering, body and large wheel can be distinguished through black and grey passages, with a light band crossing above the wheels. A driver sits high at the front, his raised position separating him from the standing figures nearby.

Grey and white touches describe the horses farther right. Their lighter colour helps detach them from the darker vehicle and surrounding green field. Narrow lines connect the front of the carriage with the driver and animals, establishing the direction of the group even where individual forms remain loosely defined.

The vehicle’s comparatively clear horizontal structure contrasts with the upright people behind it. Together, they form a small concentration of dark marks within the lower landscape.

A Group of Small Figures

The mourners gather in an irregular line extending left from the hearse. Dark coats and hats give the group its overall shape, interrupted by occasional pale or warm-coloured touches. Some bodies are close together, while small green intervals separate others. The line therefore has a varied rhythm rather than a continuous, evenly spaced outline.

The figures are much smaller than the foreground trees. Their heads appear as brief touches, and their clothing is described through broad, often elongated shapes. One figure stands apart near the front of the vehicle, introducing another upright form between the horses and the more closely grouped people.

Green Ground and Dark Trees

Green spreads across much of the lower half of the canvas. Behind the procession, a broad curved area rises towards the pale buildings. Its upper edge creates a gentle change of direction beneath the more angular skyline, while darker marks interrupt the field closer to the figures.

On the left, trees occupy a much larger area. Their foliage forms dense, irregular masses, with deep green and nearly black passages extending towards the middle of the painting. Shorter strokes break the edges of these masses, giving them a different character from the smoother curve of the ground behind the hearse.

Several trunks descend through this foliage towards the lower edge. Some remain dark against pale openings; others emerge through lighter vertical touches. The spaces between them allow glimpses of the ground and buildings beyond, keeping the tree group from closing the left side completely.

Pale Walls beneath the Skyline

A band of pale buildings crosses the middle distance. White, cream and grey passages suggest walls and roofs, while warmer touches appear in smaller areas. Some edges are comparatively firm, but others dissolve into neighbouring paint, leaving the urban forms only partly described.

Dark trees rise in front of these pale surfaces. Their narrow, upward shapes interrupt the buildings at several points, creating another sequence of light and dark across the picture. The repeated verticals differ in height and inclination, so the band has an uneven, changing upper edge.

Above it, domes, towers and roof shapes form the more distant skyline. A dark rounded structure appears towards the left, while a larger dome rises above the centre-right. Farther right, narrower towers project above a long dark roofline. These silhouettes bring recognisable architectural forms into the loosely painted setting.

The Met’s commentary identifies the skyline with the Val de Grâce, the Panthéon, Saint-Étienne-du-Mont and the Tour de Clovis.^[1]

A Large, Clouded Sky

The sky fills an extensive area above the buildings. Broad grey and blue-grey passages spread across it, with white cloud forms appearing in uneven groups. Some of the lighter touches are rounded and compact; others stretch out or break into separate marks.

Stronger blue appears in small openings between the clouds. These patches are especially noticeable near the upper middle and towards the right, where they interrupt the larger grey field. Their relatively clear colour gives the sky variations that can be followed independently of the darker skyline below.

The cloud shapes also vary in direction. Slanting strokes cross the upper left, while lighter passages gather above the central dome and along the upper right. The result is a sky with several centres of activity, spread across a much wider area than the procession.

Its scale changes the balance of the subject. The small funeral group occupies only one corner, while the sky and landscape command most of the canvas. The viewer can move between the particular event and the larger arrangement of weather, trees and distant city.

A Painting with an Unresolved State of Finish

The Met describes The Funeral as unfinished. In her 2016 essay on unfinished European art, curator Eva Reifert discusses the uncertainty surrounding that description: scholars have differed over whether Manet interrupted the work or intended it to remain a sketch.^[2]

She reports that the painting was neither signed nor dated, and that its first description in Manet’s posthumous inventory placed it among painted studies under the title Enterrement à la glacière. Her account also notes an inscription by Manet’s widow certifying its authenticity.^[2]

The visible differences in handling make this question relevant to looking at the painting. Some forms, such as the hearse’s wheel and the distant domes, are readily distinguished, while other passages merge into broad strokes and open edges. The foliage, walls and clouds offer different degrees of definition within the same view.

The Proposed Connection with Baudelaire

The museum suggests that the scene depicts Charles Baudelaire’s funeral, held on 2 September 1867. Its account places Manet among the mourners and notes the small attendance and threat of a summer storm.^[1] The identification remains qualified, as does the painting’s approximate date.

The friendship provides a relevant context for that proposal. In the French account of its 2011 Manet exhibition, the Musée d’Orsay describes the affinity between painter and poet as lasting until Baudelaire’s death in 1867, while acknowledging uncertainty about when it began.^[3]

The small painted figures, however, retain their visual character as a group: their positions, dark clothing and relationship with the hearse are clearer than any individual identity.

From Manet to Pissarro and the Met

According to the Met, Manet kept the painting until his death. In 1894 Camille Pissarro acquired it in exchange for one of his own landscapes.^[1]

The museum’s present credit records the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1909.^[1]