Stéphane Mallarmé by Édouard Manet

Mallarmé leans back against a pale cushion, one hand tucked into his coat and the other resting on pages at the edge of the picture. A cigar gives that extended hand something to hold. Above it, a little smoke rises into the quieter space beside his face.

Manet's portrait brings the poet close without making him face us squarely. His body sits to the right, while his head tilts towards the more open part of the composition. Painted in 1876, this small canvas records a friendship that also produced illustrated books and sustained arguments about the possibilities of modern art.^[1][2]

A Portrait on an Intimate Scale

The painting is only a little over twenty-seven centimetres high. Its horizontal shape leaves room beside the sitter instead of filling the whole field with an upright figure. The result feels suited to close examination: the eye can travel from the face to the fingers, then across the marks on the surrounding fabric.

The Musée d'Orsay places the sitting in Manet's studio.^[1] The cushion, patterned wall covering and pages make that setting tangible without describing the room in full. We see a familiar corner occupied by a person who appears able to settle into it.

Juliet Wilson-Bareau relates the portrait to the studio at 4 rue de Saint-Pétersbourg, where Mallarmé was a frequent visitor.^[2] The relaxed pose belongs to this history of familiarity. It gives the figure a particular kind of presence: a friend within reach of conversation, whose attention is allowed to turn away from the viewer.

The small scale also makes the contrast between figure and surroundings unusually concentrated. Dark clothing occupies much of the right half. A larger area of muted olive and brown opens to the left, crossed by scattered decorative marks. The face sits near the meeting of those two fields.

The Head and the Sideways Glance

The dark hair spreads around a broad, light forehead. It is brushed in larger masses than the features beneath it, with irregular edges that keep the head from becoming a neatly enclosed silhouette. A warmer brown moustache draws attention towards the mouth and the short beard below.

The eyes are small, uneven accents within the modelling of the face. One catches more light; the other sits closer to shadow. Together with the eyebrows and the turn of the nose, they carry the glance across the picture towards the left.

Manet does not need a strong theatrical expression to make the face engaging. Small changes between pale grey, pink and brown establish cheek, temple and chin. The features remain recognisable even where an edge breaks into a stroke of colour.

The tilt of the head gives the figure a mild asymmetry. It relates the face to the reclining body while leaving a small interval of darker background behind the hair. The head appears supported by the larger arrangement without becoming rigidly aligned with the shoulders.

That sideways attention gives the viewer something to follow, but it leaves Mallarmé's actual thoughts open. The painting offers the outward signs of a pause: a settled body, a hand on papers, a cigar and a glance. The intimacy comes partly from being able to remain with those signs without receiving a formal address.

Dark Clothes, Pale Cuffs and Two Hands

The coat initially reads as a large dark shape. Looking longer reveals blue-green and grey passages within it. Lapels cross the chest; the sleeves turn through broader areas of shadow; small highlights pick out buttons. Black is distributed across several subtly different surfaces.

At the right, a pale cuff separates the wrist from the dark sleeve. The hand slips into the pocket, leaving the thumb visible above the opening. It is an economical gesture, enough to suggest the body's ease without requiring every finger to be described.

The other hand extends towards the lower left. Its fingers lie across the pale pages, and the brown cigar introduces a short, firmer shape among the flesh tones. The exposed cuff behind it forms another light interval against the sleeve.

These two passages give the dark figure a loose balance. One hand withdraws into the clothes; the other reaches into the lighter space. The face rises between them, forming a third concentrated area of pale colour. None is placed on a strict central axis.

Across the lower centre, broad grey strokes describe the trousers. Their direction differs from the heavier sweep of the coat. The cropped view gives enough of the lower body to establish a reclining attitude, while keeping the main attention on the face and hands.

Pages, a Cigar and a Patterned Background

The pages beneath the extended hand are light enough to draw the eye immediately. Their edges overlap a darker reddish-brown support, and the fingers interrupt the pale surface. Nothing legible identifies the writing. The museum suggests a possible connection with Mallarmé's work, while leaving the particular text uncertain.^[1]

That uncertainty is useful to the portrait's effect. Papers belong naturally beside a writer, yet their presence does not turn the scene into an illustration of one named poem. They give the sitter an occupation and a recent or interrupted activity, with the words themselves left inaccessible.

The cigar supplies another small focus. Nearby, a thin bluish-grey sweep rises through the warmer background. Its lightness differs from the dense black of the coat and the more substantial white of the papers. A few marks introduce something transient into the otherwise settled pose.

The background is quiet in colour but not empty. Thin plant-like forms extend across it, with small bird-like motifs and broader touches near the top. Their spacing leaves a relatively open area beside the head. The wall covering has its own decorative life, at a lower visual intensity than the person in front of it.

Behind the shoulder, the pale cushion provides a more active surface. Cream, grey and darker touches suggest folds and pattern, gathering near the edge of the coat. The figure is supported by a mixture of soft furnishing and broad painted marks, with neither described in a uniformly polished manner.

Friendship and Regular Studio Visits

Manet and Mallarmé became friends around 1873. Mallarmé taught English at the Lycée Condorcet and often visited the painter's nearby studio. Wilson-Bareau describes the proximity of their daily lives and the regularity of these meetings.^[2]

Their conversation could move between art and ordinary interests. Mallarmé's involvement with fashion is particularly well documented: in 1874 he wrote La Dernière Mode, using several pseudonyms for articles on clothes and other aspects of contemporary culture. The Musée départemental Stéphane Mallarmé places this work alongside his developing artistic friendships.^[3]

Looking back after Manet's death, Mallarmé recalled seeing him every day for ten years, in an autobiographical letter to Paul Verlaine in 1885.^[2] The recollection conveys the importance of the friendship. In the painting, its more immediate counterpart is the ease with which a visitor occupies the studio's furniture and space.

Le Corbeau: Poet, Translator and Painter

In 1875, Mallarmé and Manet collaborated on Le Corbeau, a French translation of Edgar Allan Poe's narrative poem The Raven. Their roles were distinct: Poe wrote the poem, Mallarmé translated it, and Manet supplied the images. A copy now in the National Gallery of Art records that partnership in a large illustrated volume.^[4]

Richard Lesclide published the book in Paris, with the English and French texts facing each other. Wilson-Bareau distinguishes four narrative lithographs from the raven imagery on the wrapper and bookplate.^[2] The design extended the collaboration across the object the reader handled, as well as the pages being read.

The Louvre's record for an undated letter to Lesclide, placed around 1875, links Manet's offer to illustrate the translation with gratitude for Mallarmé's defence of his paintings at the Salon of 1874. It also records a disagreement over the publication's presentation.^[5] Such details make the collaboration practical as well as intellectual: images, words and the physical form of a book had to be brought together.

The National Gallery's copy contains an original drawing and a double suite of the four full-page transfer lithographs, among its other components.^[4] These details describe that particular copy. They also show why an illustrated book can preserve several kinds of work within one binding, each with its own relation to the artist's hand and the printing process.

The Raven on the Bust

One of Manet's narrative illustrations shows the raven perched high on a sculpted bust above a doorway. A human figure occupies the lower right, looking upwards. The space between them is crossed by broad, slanting black marks, so that the bird's elevated position dominates the scene.^[2]

The pale door is described with thin contours and a few darker accents. Much of its surface remains light. Above it, the bust emerges through scattered black shapes, with the raven forming a denser mass at its summit. The figure below is similarly economical: a face, hair and shoulders gather from a small number of lines and patches.

The surrounding strokes behave differently. Some are sharp and heavy, others broken and grainy. Their diagonal movement interrupts the door's more regular verticals and horizontals, making the room feel less stable than its architectural outlines first suggest.

The comparison with the portrait brings out Manet's ability to make forms through selective marks. Mallarmé's coat contains broad dark passages with small interruptions for cuff, button and hand. The print uses open paper and concentrated black to make a very different scene legible.

Oil paint and lithographic ink remain different materials, and the printed figure belongs to Poe's fiction. The value of the comparison lies in the range of Manet's handling: he could turn a few forceful shapes towards a familiar sitter or towards the charged space of an illustrated poem.

L'Après-midi d'un faune in 1876

The following year brought another collaboration, this time around Mallarmé's own poem. L'Après-midi d'un faune appeared in Paris with Alphonse Derenne in 1876. The Bibliothèque nationale de France describes the original edition as containing four wood-engraved designs by Manet, with a numbered edition of 195 copies.^[6]

This required a different process from Le Corbeau. Wilson-Bareau explains that Manet drew on woodblocks that were then cut by a professional engraver. She also describes the attention given to papers, ink, binding and delicate washes of colour.^[2] The image was part of a considered book design, carried through several materials and stages of work.

The two books bring the friendship into a form that the portrait alone cannot show. Mallarmé could translate a poem by another author or publish his own; Manet could adjust the scale and means of his images to each project. Their cooperation depended on individual contributions meeting within a shared object.

The portrait belongs to the same year as the Faune. The papers beneath the sitter's hand may encourage a reader to connect painting and poetry, but they do not identify the poem he was working on. The broader association is secure: this was a period when words, images and personal friendship repeatedly came together in their work.

Mallarmé's Defence of Manet

Mallarmé's support also took the form of art criticism. His 1874 article defended Manet against the Salon jury's rejection of two paintings. In 1876, The Impressionists and Edouard Manet appeared in English, considering the painter's place in the new movement.^[3][7]

James Kearns places that later article within arguments about Manet's critical reputation and his relation to the younger Impressionists. He records the invitation from the English editor George Robinson in July 1876 and reads the essay as an effort to explain the painter's importance amid competing assessments of the new art.^[7]

The Musée d'Orsay presents the portrait as an expression of thanks for Mallarmé's English article.^[1] The painting and that essay both belong to 1876, although the year alone cannot establish the order of the sitting and publication. Their relationship is best understood within the continuing exchange of support, discussion and collaboration between the two men.

A Gift Kept in the Poet's Family

Manet gave the painting to Mallarmé. It remained with the poet's family, passing through his widow and the household of his daughter Geneviève and her husband, Dr Edmond Bonniot. In 1928 the Louvre acquired it with assistance from the Société des Amis du Louvre and D. David-Weill. It was assigned to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986.^[1]

The passage from a personal gift to a public collection has made this small image part of the wider history of Manet's paintings. Yet its scale continues to ask for the kind of attention one might give to a picture kept close: the shift of an eye, the edge of a cuff, the hand resting on a page.

The signature lies below those pages, near the lower-left edge. Above it, the fingers and cigar hold the eye briefly before it returns to the face. The portrait's liveliness comes through these small connections, which let the figure remain settled while the surface stays active.