Young Bull in a Meadow

A broad brown body stretches across the grass, while a white face turns towards the viewer in Édouard Manet's Young Bull in a Meadow. Small horns, ears and a pale muzzle register against the green surroundings. Manet painted this oil on canvas at Versailles during summer 1881. Rouart and Wildenstein catalogue it as RW I383, measuring 79 × 99 cm.^[1]

The Turned White Face

The body faces right, but the lowered head turns outwards. The flank extends across the canvas, while the face brings attention towards the space in front. Théodore Duret described this combination of profile body and front-facing head in his 1902 catalogue.^[2]

The white marking broadens across the forehead and narrows as it descends between darker patches around the eyes. Below, the pinkish-grey muzzle forms a softer rounded shape. Short brown marks interrupt its pale surface and indicate the nostrils and mouth. These small accents give definition to an area that remains much lighter than the neck behind it.

Small horns rise at either side of the crown. The ears project more horizontally, widening the head's outline against the grass. One pale horn catches the light near the right edge of the face. Together, horns and ears create a set of pointed interruptions around the otherwise rounded forehead and muzzle.

Colour across the Flank

The body occupies a broad band across the middle of the picture. Its back slopes from the rump at the left towards the lowered neck. Beneath that contour, patches of warm brown, ochre, grey and cooler blue-grey describe the flank. Some descend steeply, while others follow the back or turn around the shoulder.

These marks remain conspicuous as individual strokes. A pale grey passage beside a dark brown one can suggest a change of surface without a continuous smooth transition between them. From farther away, the contrasting patches collect into the animal's weight and rounded form. At closer range, the same flank becomes a field of angular, differently coloured marks.

The white underside gives the body a sharper lower boundary. Its irregular strip runs beneath the belly and continues towards the chest. Dark strokes cross this light area, while small green interruptions connect it with the surrounding field. The white face and belly are separated by the darker neck, so the two pale passages punctuate different parts of the animal.

Legs, Tail and Ground

The legs narrow the broad mass of the body into a few slender supports. At the left, the rear legs overlap and meet darker marks in the grass. Farther right, a more clearly defined foreleg descends below the shoulder, with a small pale accent near its lower end. Other leg forms are partly concealed by the body and one another.

The tail supplies a looser curve. It hangs from the rump before bending out towards the left, its pale and brown strands separating from the field behind. This irregular sweep contrasts with the straighter downward lines of the legs. It also extends the animal's silhouette into a part of the meadow where fewer solid forms interrupt the grass.

A darker patch spreads beneath and in front of the bull. Its uneven boundary is broken by green and yellow-green touches. The animal therefore meets the ground through several different kinds of mark: narrow legs, small hoof accents and a broader area of darkness. There is no hard horizontal line separating the standing figure from its surroundings.

Grass and the Wooded Edge

The meadow fills most of the lower picture. Upright strokes suggest blades of grass, while shorter diagonal and horizontal marks interrupt them. The greens vary considerably, from light yellow-green passages around the animal to cooler, darker patches near the foreground edge. The field has its own changing surface rather than serving as a single uniform backdrop.

Behind the bull, a wooded edge forms an irregular upper band. Dark leaves and branches are broken by pale, pinkish and grey-green trunk shapes. The trees extend beyond the top of the canvas, leaving little room for open sky. This enclosing band keeps the setting close, even though the grass continues behind the animal.

The bull's outline is clearest where white meets green, especially around the face and underside. Elsewhere, brown and green passages come closer in tone. The rump and upper back remain readable through their curved contour, while smaller marks along the edge merge with the surrounding foliage. Strong separation and softer transitions occur within the same silhouette.

A Low, Close View

The animal appears large within the horizontal canvas. Grass surrounds it, but no distant panorama reduces its prominence. The head sits below the line of the back, bringing the white forehead closer to the level of the meadow.

The setting contains no painted handler, gate or farm building. Attention rests on the animal and the plants immediately around it. The small horns, curved tail and open space between the legs become more noticeable against the grass and trees.

Versailles in 1881

Duret's account of Manet's later years places him at Versailles in summer 1881, staying on the avenue de Villeneuve-l'Étang. He describes a painting of the garden's empty bench and then mentions the young bull painted in grass at Versailles.^[3] The association joins two subjects from the same summer without establishing that the meadow was part of the rented garden.

The Getty's 2019 exhibition Manet and Modern Beauty situated these late outdoor subjects among the gardens, flowers and fruit that occupied the artist around 1880. Its account identifies the gardens of his rental houses at Versailles in 1881 and Rueil in 1882 as sources for paintings.^[4] In Young Bull in a Meadow, the visible setting is less formally arranged than a planted garden: a broad grassy area meets the wooded edge, with the animal supplying the principal solid shape.

A Garden at Versailles

My Garden (The Bench), also dated 1881, offers a more cultivated outdoor space. The Getty exhibition checklist records it as an oil on canvas measuring 65.1 × 81.3 cm, lent from a private collection.^[5] An empty bench and small round table stand beside a pale path, surrounded by red flowers and dense foliage. Slender uprights and a finer framework divide the greenery behind them.

The path leads into the garden from the lower left, turning between the beds towards the furniture. In the bull painting, the eye encounters the broad body first, then follows the legs down into the grass. One composition organises movement through a narrow route; the other places a large animal across an expanse of meadow.

Both pictures set warm colours among many greens. Red flowers punctuate the garden's leaves, while browns and ochres distinguish the bull's flank. The bench, table and path suggest places for human use in the garden, although nobody is seated there. The meadow contains a living occupant whose body establishes the scale of the surrounding vegetation.

An Unusual Cattle Subject

Duret called the young bull Manet's only painting of its kind, but immediately followed that entry with a small study of three cows at Berck.^[2] That separate work, Vaches au pâturage, was catalogued by Sotheby's in 2019 as an oil on panel painted in 1873; Duret had dated it to 1871.^[6] The larger Versailles canvas gives a single animal far more of the picture's surface, making its turned face, broad flank and slender legs the principal forms against the meadow.