Detail of Lola de Valence by Manet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: Lola de Valence

Artist: Edouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris)

Date: 1862

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 48 7/16 × 36 1/4 in. (123 × 92 cm)
Framed: 56 7/8 × 44 5/16 in. (144.5 × 112.5 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Musée d'Orsay, Paris (RF 1991)

Long inspired by Spanish art and culture, Manet here depicted the star of a popular Spanish ballet that found great success in Paris. When the artist first exhibited the painting at the Galerie Martinet in 1863, Lola appeared against a neutral background. He later modified the setting by adding a stage backdrop seen from behind and a glimpse of the audience beyond. Portraying performers suspended between the spheres of public and private, real life and performance, later became a preoccupation of Degas’s, which he first explored in Mademoiselle Fiocre in the Ballet “La Source,” on view nearby.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/853592