Detail of the Music Lesson by Manet in the Metropolitan Museum, December 2023

Title: Music Lesson

Artist: Edouard Manet

Date: 1870

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 55 1/2 × 68 1/8 in. (141 × 173.1 cm)

Framed: 73 1/4 × 60 7/8 × 3 1/2 in., 150 lb. (186.1 × 154.6 × 8.9 cm, 68 kg)

Credit Line: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Anonymous Centennial gift in memory of Charles
Deering (69.1123)

Object No.: MD.003

Manet here depicts a friend, the writer and artistic polymath Zacharie Astruc, playing guitar alongside an unknown female sitter holding a songbook. Astruc is said to have learned guitar from the Catalan musician Jaime Bosch; both men participated in the musical evenings hosted by the Manet family and attended by Degas. This painting evokes not only those soirees but also Manet and Astruc’s shared appreciation of Spanish culture. While this work recalls Manet’s first public success, The Spanish Singer (1861), on view in the next gallery, it was not favorably received when it was exhibited at the Salon in 1870.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/manet-degas/exhibition-objects