Nana by Édouard Manet

A young woman pauses before a mirror, her powder puff still raised. Her body faces the dressing area, but her head turns towards us. A man in a top hat sits behind her on a red sofa, watching from the edge of the picture. His presence makes the room an encounter; her glance opens it to another observer.

Manet painted Nana in 1877. The nearly life-size figure, pale blue corset and elaborate underclothes belong to a modern Parisian interior whose sexual implications were readily understood by contemporary critics. Rejected by the Salon, the painting found a public in a shop window. It now belongs to the Hamburger Kunsthalle.^[1][2]

A Pause in Making Up

Nana stands close to a tall oval mirror. Cosmetics occupy her hands: a large white powder puff and a small stick which the museum identifies as lipstick.^[1] These implements establish an activity that has momentarily stopped. Her face has turned away from the reflective surface, leaving the powder and colour suspended between preparation and display.

Her raised arm makes the gesture conspicuous. A gold bracelet encircles the wrist; the fingers are separated delicately, with one lifted away from the others. The puff is a broad, soft patch of white near the shoulder. Against it, the small cosmetic stick almost disappears. Manet makes the action readable through the arrangement of hand, face and mirror, even where the individual objects are lightly indicated.

The reddish-gold hair is gathered high, giving the head a rounded silhouette against the pale blue wall. Small bright touches mark earrings and hair ornament. The lips have a stronger red, and the eyes turn towards the space in front of the canvas. These concentrated details bring attention to the face without making its expression easy to settle into a single emotion.

The body retains its orientation towards the mirror. The blue corset narrows at the waist, while the white petticoat projects behind it and falls to a ruffled edge around the knees. Below, pale stockings lead to dark shoes with high heels. The turn of the head interrupts this long, carefully arranged figure. We meet her at the point when attention has shifted away from the task in her hands.

The painting’s scale gives that meeting a physical immediacy. At 154 centimetres high, the canvas can accommodate a standing woman who comes close to life size.^[1] Her feet rest near its lower boundary, while her hair approaches the upper part of the wall decoration. The room leaves comparatively little empty space around her.

The Man on the Sofa

The seated visitor appears at the right, where the frame cuts through his body. We see a moustached face beneath a top hat, a white shirt, dark clothes and a hand holding a cane. He occupies only part of the picture, yet his direction of attention gives him an essential role. Nana is preparing herself in company.

His dark clothing contrasts with the pale figure in front. The white shirt introduces a bright shape beside the blue corset and petticoat, but most of his body merges with the darker upholstery and lower corner. Manet gives the woman the central, fully visible position and lets the visitor enter through a fragment.

The hat remains on indoors. Writing about the painting in 1906, Théodore Duret treated the combination of a woman at her toilet and a seated, hatted man as the detail that made a courtesan’s interior legible.^[3] The setting’s implications emerge through the relationship between the people as much as through her clothing.

The museum’s commentary describes him as a waiting client. J.-K. Huysmans, reviewing the work in 1877, called him her lover.^[1][2] Both readings place the encounter within a sexual relationship, although they give that relationship different terms. The painted figure does not tell us his name or document a particular transaction.

His gaze and Nana’s glance also follow different routes. He attends to her; she turns towards us. The arrangement loosens his apparent possession of the scene. He may share the room with her, but the central figure has another audience beyond him.

Huysmans noticed how the man seemed to extend outside the frame, comparing the device with certain Japanese pictures.^[2] The observation catches the effect of the cropping: the room feels as though it continues beyond the rectangle, while the visitor’s incomplete appearance makes Nana’s full-length presence more emphatic.

A Mirror with Another Audience

The mirror occupies the left side on a long black stand. Its oval rises above a slender stem, with curved feet spreading across the floor. This dark structure offers a second upright beside Nana, but its angled surface supplies little reflected information. The pale glass remains quiet beside her face and bright costume.

Its position matters more than a detailed reflection. A mirror provides a reason for the woman to stand here and a direction in which she might look. Her turn away from it makes our position noticeable. We have become the destination of attention that might otherwise remain within the private business of making up.

Daniel Koep’s museum commentary reads the outward glance as an invitation to a third participant, drawing the picture’s viewers into the scene.^[1] The geometry supports that reading: mirror, seated observer and spectator offer three possible destinations for Nana’s attention, and the painting makes us aware of all three.

This need not settle her private intentions. The face can suggest confidence, amusement or a momentary acknowledgment according to where we concentrate. What is clear is the shift in direction. Manet lets a small movement of the head change the relationship between the central figure and the people looking at her.

The mirror’s dark rim and the visitor’s hat mark the two margins. Between them, the pale standing figure remains conspicuous.

Blue Corset, White Petticoat, Red Sofa

Nana’s costume gives the picture its brightest continuous shape. The corset is built from pale blues, whites and stronger linear accents. Seams and edges describe its fitted structure, while short marks around the shoulder fabric allow it to appear lighter and more irregular. The narrow waist gives way to the rounded projection of the petticoat.

White takes several different forms. The powder puff has a soft, almost circular outline; the petticoat has a long, relatively broad surface; its lower ruffles break into small overlapping strokes. The stockings are smoother and cooler, carrying the figure down towards the violet-black shoes. A little floral decoration near the feet interrupts their pale length.

Behind her, the sofa’s red upholstery supplies a warm, dark field. Its gilded frame curves down and up across the room, passing behind the woman and towards the seated man. A green cushion and pale patterned textile soften the back of the seat. Their loose folds contrast with the corset’s more controlled outline.

The mirror’s stem and the sofa’s carved legs introduce dark and golden lines near the floor. Nana’s feet stand among these furnishings, bringing the elegantly dressed figure into a crowded, tangible interior. The shoes are small, sharply dark accents within the warm brown at the bottom of the canvas.

At far left, pale blue and white clothing lies over a chair. Flowers and a green pot occupy the small dressing area, with two little candleholders nearby. The objects help define a room equipped for personal appearance and comfort. They also allow Manet to move between quite different painted surfaces: cloth, flowers, metal, glass and upholstery.

The wall behind is itself an image. A large bird stands among water and plants, introducing another curved neck and upright legs above the visitor. Its pale blues and greens connect with the costume and cushions below. The decorative landscape remains close behind the figures, pressing the room towards the picture’s surface.

There is still depth to explore. The sofa passes behind Nana, the cushion rests against its back, and the mirror stands in front of the dressing area. These overlaps give the interior its order. At the same time, the wall pattern, close framing and strong areas of colour encourage the eye to move across the canvas, attending to painted shapes as readily as to objects in a room.

Henriette Hauser and the Figure of Nana

Theodore Reff identifies the model as the actress Henriette Hauser, drawing on Werner Hofmann’s study of the painting.^[4] That identification gives the woman who posed a name distinct from the character Manet presented to the public.

The difference matters in a picture so closely associated with a social type. Nana’s costume, visitor and setting establish the role of a courtesan within the scene. They do not, by themselves, provide a biography of Hauser. The painting is a constructed encounter, with a model giving visible form to a figure whom critics connected to modern Paris and its literature.

Reff places the work within the world of boulevard entertainment and fashionable society that Manet knew. His discussion connects actresses, writers, artists and wealthy courtesans, showing how those circles could overlap.^[4] For this picture, the relevant point is the availability of a recognisable contemporary milieu: a furnished room, carefully prepared appearance and a visitor whose presence makes the setting socially charged.

Manet gives that subject the scale and concentration of a substantial figure painting. Nana’s entire standing body is available to us, while the man remains at the margin. Her clothing and gesture carry the central action. The title names her, and the composition makes her the person through whom we encounter the room.

Why Is the Painting Called Nana?

The title connects the picture with Émile Zola’s fiction, but the sequence of dates is important. Manet’s painting dates from 1877. Zola’s novel Nana appeared in book form in 1880. The character was already known through L’Assommoir, published in 1877.^[4]

Huysmans provides a particularly useful contemporary link. In his review of 13 May 1877, he explicitly calls Manet’s subject the Nana of L’Assommoir. Later in the same article, he looks forward to the kind of courtesan Zola will portray in a forthcoming novel.^[2] The painting’s name was therefore already in public use while that later literary treatment was still ahead.

The relationship is more suggestive than a straightforward illustration. A viewer can recognise a connection with Zola’s world while also attending to the particular woman, costume and arrangement Manet has painted. The powder puff, mirror and cropped visitor form a scene that has to work through visible relationships on the canvas.

Duret made this distinction when discussing Manet’s literary subjects. He argued that the painter approached them through living people with their own appearances, rather than simply reproducing an author’s imagined character. His comparison included both Nana and the actors Manet painted as Hamlet.^[3]

Refused by the Salon, Seen at Giroux

The Salon jury refused Nana in 1877. Manet’s portrait of the singer Jean-Baptiste Faure as Hamlet was accepted that year, so the rejection concerned this submission rather than a complete exclusion of his work.^[4][3]

The courtesan subject was central to Duret’s later explanation of the refusal. He argued that the man beside the woman made the setting too unmistakable for the jury.^[3] The museum likewise relates the rejection to the representation of prostitution.^[1] These accounts explain the subject’s controversial implications without supplying an official written verdict from the jurors.

Refusal did not keep the picture out of public view. Huysmans opened his May review by reporting that it had just been displayed in the windows of the maison Giroux. Reff locates the gallery on the boulevard des Capucines.^[2][4] A commercial window gave the rejected canvas a different place within the city’s visual life.

Huysmans described people gathering before it, with laughter and cries of indignation. His account is openly combative: he attacks the crowd’s taste and sets Manet against the painters favoured by the Salon.^[2] It records a public encounter, seen through the eyes of a critic eager to defend the work and challenge its opponents.

The change of setting added an unusual relationship between the painted room and the street outside. Within the picture, a woman is watched by a seated visitor and turns towards another spectator. In the window, passers-by could become that further audience, looking into a private interior placed on public display.

Huysmans’s Praise and Reservations

Huysmans’s defence was far from unqualified praise. He found weaknesses in Nana’s head and the connection of the neck, and criticised what he saw as chalky whites, dirty reds and bluntly applied blacks. Yet he admired the body, the legs, the bracelet-wearing arm and the hand holding the powder puff.^[2]

His response moves repeatedly between subject and handling. The stockings mattered to him both as painted fabric and as a sign of the woman’s represented social world. He defended their unusual appearance, discussing the close weave and subdued shine as characteristics of fashionable luxury.^[2]

That passage helps explain why clothing occupies so much attention in the painting. The woman is partly dressed, but the garments already form an elaborate public appearance. The fitted corset, decorated stockings and small high-heeled shoes are objects to be looked at in their own right. Preparation and display overlap before the process of dressing is complete.

Huysmans interpreted such finery through a hierarchy of courtesans, placing expensive underclothes above more conspicuous outer fashions as signs of wealth. His discussion carries the sexual and class prejudices of its language.^[2] It remains valuable as evidence of how a contemporary critic read the details, rather than as an account of the model’s character or private life.

He was especially enthusiastic about the accessories. Sofa, discarded blue clothing, flowers and small furniture were, in his view, handled with a breadth and vigour that more laborious painters could envy. He also praised the seated observer.^[2] The parts that might seem secondary to Nana’s figure helped make the whole interior convincing to him.

His reservations make the admiration more specific. He could object to a head or a passage of colour while responding strongly to the painting’s life and physical presence.

Look again at the white petticoat after reading his complaint about chalky whites, or at the sofa after his praise of the accessories. The picture can sustain both sorts of attention. Its broad strokes establish fabric and furniture quickly, while their edges, colours and relationships keep drawing the eye back to the woman standing among them.

From Paris to Hamburg

After Manet’s death, Nana appeared in the posthumous sale of his work in 1884. Its subsequent owners included Auguste Pellerin, before it entered the Hamburg collection of Theodor E. Behrens in 1910. Esther Behrens inherited it after his death in 1921, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle acquired it in 1924.^[1]

That journey brought a painting refused by a Paris exhibition jury into a major public collection. The signature and date remain near the floor at the lower left, beneath the mirror’s feet. Above them, the paused gesture still holds: the puff raised, the visitor watching, the woman’s face turned towards us.

For another encounter organised around a woman, a mirror and a spectator, see Manet’s later A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. In Nana, the small oval mirror yields attention to the direct exchange across the painted surface.