Les Chats. The Cats. by Édouard Manet, 1832-1883

Édouard Manet, 1832-1883
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Les Chats. The Cats.

Original etching with touches of aquatint and a wiped plate tone in black-brown ink. 1868/69. From the edition of 100 impressions printed by Delâtre and issued by Strolin, 1905. (Only some 30/40 impressions exist prior to this issue).
Ref: Guérin - Manet l'Oeuvre Gravé no 52. Bareau-Berès - Edouard Manet no 58. Fisher - Baltimore Museum, The Prints of Edouard Manet no 51.

Excellent tonal impression. On pale cream laid Van Gelder paper. Excellent condition. Full margins. Sheet: 12 7/8 x 17 5/8ins. Plate: 7 x 8 5/8ins (178x220mm)

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'Les Chats' is one of the most appealing and most creatively inventive of all Manet's etchings. It is a work which expresses not only his lifelong fondness for cats but also his assimilation and then reuse in his own personal manner of the compositional ideas he so admired in Japanese prints, and his instinctive feel for the way that the tone and line values of etching could be use in a visually creative way.

In Manet's sketchbooks there are frequent studies of cats in various poses. Inspired by compositions by Hokusai, in which seemingly unrelated forms are linked into a visual whole, Manet decided to bring together some of the poses in the sketches into a single composition. He exploited the differing textures of etching to link the contrasts in the forms; The cat on the left totally shaded with a linear pattern, in the bottom cat almost totally 'open' with shading just on the contour, and a combination of shading and open areas in the cat under the chair at the top. Manet had first shown his passion for cats in the composition 'Olympia', then in 1868 he drew the famous lithograph poster to publicise Champfleury's book on cats and the etching for the deluxe issue in the following year. This etching was drawn at the same period.

The etching 'Les Chats' was drawn by Manet entirely for his own personal pleasure with no intention of making an issued or published edition. Only one or two proofs were pulled in 1868/69. The plate was then acquired from Mme Manet for the edition of 30 for the Dumont album in 1894, and for the edition of 100 for the 1905 Strolin issue, as here. The plate was then deposited in the Bibliothèque Nationale archive. All impressions of this etching are very uncommon.