René Maizeroy 1882

Edouard Manet painted this oil on canvas of René Maizeroy, a French novelist and playwright, sometime in the late 19th century. Manet's loose brushstrokes capture the essence of Maizeroy's bourgeois identity: his tailored suit, bowler hat, and cane speak to a certain class and status. Yet, there's a psychological depth here as well. There’s a tension between the traditional expectations of portraiture and Manet's modern approach, which favors immediacy and feeling over strict representation. Manet, a flâneur of his time, captured fleeting moments of Parisian life, and his portraits often reflect the social and cultural milieu of his sitters. As Manet once said, "I paint what I see, and not what others want to see." Consider how Manet, through his rendering of Maizeroy, engages with questions of masculinity and social role-playing, inviting us to reflect on the complexities of identity in modern society.