Édouard Manet · 1876
Before the Mirror
Édouard Manet
Before the Mirror
1876
Painted by Édouard Manet in 1876, 'Before the Mirror' is a small oil study of a young woman seen from behind, loosening her corset before a tall swing mirror. Instead of her face, the glass reflects only the soft flesh of her shoulders and bare back in a shimmering pink-and-white patch — a modernist splintering of subject, gaze, and space that enchanted Cézanne and Degas. Held today by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, it is one of that collection's finest examples of Manet at his most lyrically Impressionist.
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Image source: Wikimedia Commons