Édouard Manet

Jean-Baptiste Faure, Paris (acquired directly from the artist)
Maurice Faure, Paris
Mme Maurice Faure, Paris (by 1914)
Jean and Pierre Faure, Paris (by 1915 until at least 1928)
Jakob Goldschmidt, Berlin and NeuBabelsberg (by 1933)
Sale: Hans W. Lange, Berlin, September 25, 1941, lot 41 (forced sale of the Collection of Jakob Goldschmidt)
Countess von der Goltz, Berlin (acquired at the above sale)
Jakob Goldschmidt, New York (restituted to him by the above in 1955)
Thence by descent to the present owner

The present letter reads as follows:

Bellevue.
Mon cher Faure, je vous envoie deux prunes de mon jardin et mes amities.
E. Manet

In the summer of 1880, Manet rented a cottage in the town of Bellevue, just beyond the outskirts of Paris. It was during his sojourn in this small, bucolic town that Manet wrote elegant personal letters  to friends and adorned them with masterful illustrations. This series of letters display Manet's exquisite sense of tact and a mastery of the medium of watercolor. In Lettre à Faure, Manet's unmatched ability to render the texture of fruit in his oil paintings is here transformed into a fresh and spontaneous depiction in watercolor. This rare glimpse into Manet's artistic process reveals a more intimate perspective of the artist at a moment of rest and solitude.

Jean-Baptiste Faure, to whom this letter was addressed, was one of the most prominent collectors and patrons of the arts in Paris during the last decades of the 19th Century. He was particularly drawn to Manet and what was then referred to as the "New School," later known as the Impressionists. He had been introduced to this fresh and bold group of artists through his friend and art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel. Through his lifetime, he would own sixty-seven paintings by Manet, including at one point Manet's masterpiece Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863). Lettre à Faure is a brilliant testament to the kinship between one of the greatest Impressionist painters and one of his most valued patrons.

This letter remained in the Faure family until the late 1920's and was acquired by Jakob Goldschmidt in 1933. Goldschmidt, a prominent figure in international banking and one of the most important collectors of Impressionist art during the first half of the twentieth century, was forced to flee Germany for Switzerland in 1933. Much of his collection was left behind and subsequently seized by the Nazi regime. The current work hung in the hallway of Jakob Goldschmidt’s residence in Neu-Babelsberg, Berlin (see fig. 1), before it was taken and sold by the Nazi authorities. This was one of the few works which Jakob Goldschmidt recovered before his death in New York in 1955. In October 1958, Jakob’s son Erwin, instructed Sotheby’s to sell seven major Impressionist paintings at auction in London. This was one of the greatest sales of the Twentieth Century: the first evening sale at Sotheby’s in over 200 years, the first black tie sale and the first to market Impressionist paintings as a separate category. The sale realized a record breaking £781,000 in just 21 minutes.

Fig. 1, Jakob Goldschmidt residence, Neu Babelsberg