Le Bon Bock by Manet in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, August 2009

Le Bon Bock

Édouard Manet, French, 1832 - 1883


Geography: Made in France, Europe

Date: 1873

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 37 1/4 x 32 13/16 inches (94.6 x 83.3 cm)

Curatorial Department: European Painting before 1900, Johnson Collection
Object Location: Gallery 161, European Art 1850-1900, first floor (Annenberg Galleries; Resnick Rotunda)

Accession Number: 1963-116-9

Credit Line: The Mr. and Mrs. Carroll S. Tyson, Jr., Collection, 1963

Label: Bock is a dark, rich beer made in the spring. This vivid depiction of a drinker recalls the animated portraits by seventeenth-century Dutch masters like Frans Hals that Manet greatly admired.


Additional information:
Publicatio- Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections

In 1872 Edouard Manet traveled to Holland, and the trip reinvigorated his longstanding appreciation of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting. At the Paris Salon the following year he showed this lively picture of a man enjoying his bock, or springtime beer, that is directly influenced by such images. The warm tonalities and lively handling of paint particularly recall the work of Frans Hals. The painting was well received at the Salon, where the evocation of old master painting styles was much appreciated. This work also presented few of those surprising disjunctions of color to which conventional critics of Manet often reacted violently. Manet's model, who endured more than sixty sittings, was a neighbor of the artist named Bellot. Christopher Riopelle, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 194.


Text from: www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/59213.html?mulR=769660362|1