COME WITH ME

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

Woman in Evening Dress (Femme en robe de soirée), 1877–80. Oil on canvas, 68 5/8 x 32 7/8 inches (174.3 x 83.5 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser  78.2514.28

Manet’s endeavor to capture the flavor of contemporary society extended to portraits of barmaids, street musicians, ragpickers, and other standard Parisian “types” that were favorite subjects of popular illustrated literature. Since the subject of Woman in Evening Dress is unidentified—conjecture that she might be the French actress Suzanne Reichenberg remains purely speculative—it is tempting to view this portrait as Manet’s rendering of one such type: the fashionable Parisian bourgeois woman, complete with Japanese fan.