Conclusions

In the introduction to this publication we have stated that our research into Jobarde aims at giving new impetus to current authentication research by basing our analysis on a combination of the three most fundamental single fields of research. In doing so we were able to trace the ‘natural’ conception of a painting, in which three elements merge at the moment of creation: the intellectual process of the painter which is covered here by art historical research, the craft which is analyzed in painting technique research, and the selection of materials which we had investigated with different techniques in the material analysis. Within each of these three sections, a wide range of features were subjected to close scrutiny, but always within the context of Manet’s oeuvre as a whole and that of Jobarde in particular. In the evaluation these partial aspects were each assigned a status: negative if there was no reason to assume the authorship of Édouard Manet, neutral if there was neither denial nor confirmation of authorship, and positive if there was cause to assume Manet’s authorship.

At first glance, Jobarde is difficult to place. Especially during art historical research the painting was slow to reveal its secrets and so the neutral status prevailed. From an art historical point of view, Jobarde could therefore be easily written off. However, the neutral status also implied that there were no reasons to question the painting’s authenticity and that these findings weren’t totally without significance, as further research proved. On the contrary, it actually raised the barrier for exclusion, especially when aspects of painting technique analysis and technical material analysis proved to be intertwined with aspects of the art historical research that have a neutral status, and this resulted in an accumulation of positive statuses. As our investigation progressed, this process led to new insights into authentication research in general and into Jobarde in particular.

The first phase of our investigation consisted of art historical research, which was subdivided into five main groups: written sources, provenance, image research, oeuvre research and context. The written sources did not produce any solid facts about Jobarde and were therefore given a negative status. During our research into the painting’s provenance we were able to establish that Jobarde had surfaced on a number of occasions in time. The facts check out insofar as the painting is mentioned by existing experts, but their written reports are not sufficient proof of Manet’s authorship. Image research revealed that Manet returned to the theme of horses and people throughout his entire oeuvre, but that he only worked on the

theme of Amazons and riders on horseback during one period, namely from 1872 to 1875. This was a first step towards dating Jobarde, and this was followed up during painting technique analysis. The overall results of provenance and image research produced a neutral status.

Another aspect of image research however, was the investigation of the names, the monogram and the color signature on Jobarde, in which two features were given a positive status: the monogram on Jobarde and the yellow color signature. The monogram on Jobarde bears a strong resemblance to the monogram on the small painting L’Asperge (1880). Manet’s color signature, which appears in all his works, was first identified in the 1970s and consists of a small dab of yellow paint applied with a single brushstroke: sometimes bright lemon yellow, sometime ochre. The color signature on Jobarde can be found on the ground under the horse: an ochre tuft of paint on a boldly executed end layer that was applied in a single session.

Next, we examined the accepted classifications of Manet’s oeuvre. One of the most striking features of Jobarde is the combination of two styles, a realistic style for the horse and an impressionist style for the Amazon, which is not unusual in the work of Manet. The question we asked ourselves was how Jobarde relates to Manet’s other works. The year 1873 proved to be a turning point in Manet’s subject matter and use of color as well as in his style. Besides the combination of a realistic and an impressionist style occurs in a number of paintings from that same year. It became apparent that Jobarde must be dated to the year 1873. Further research into the technique of paintings that have been unquestionably dated to that year and that depict similar motifs, especially Le Bateau Goudronné, confirmed this and narrowed down the date to the late summer of 1873.

One of the characteristics of Manet’s time is the great interest in Spain, which proved to be the key to unravelling the composition and theme of Jobarde. Manet was familiar with works by among others El Greco, Goya, Riberas, Murillo, Zurbarán and Velázquez, and he actually visited the Prado in Madrid in September 1865, where he was able to study his favorites, particularly Velázquez. With Manet’s frequent recourse to the old masters and his often applied mirror symmetry in mind, we rotated Velázquez’s El príncipe Baltasar Carlos a caballo around its vertical axis and compared it to Jobarde. Both paintings are after all equestrian portraits and there is some similarity between the mountains in the background of both landscapes. After rotation the similarities between both paintings became even more apparent, down to details such as the remarkable physiology of the horses’ bellies. However, because these conclusions as well as those from the

oeuvre research weren’t supported by hard art historical facts, both aspects were assigned a neutral status.

In the course of our research into Manet’s painting technique, we found evidence of the influence of his teacher Thomas Couture, but it also became clear which principles lay at the foundation of his personal craftsmanship. Manet did not regard the three subsequent stages of the build-up of a painting – étude, ébauche and fini – as separate steps, but applied them simultaneously and sometimes even left out a stage, depending on the subject he was painting. He also didn’t observe all the academic conventions that were required in each stage. So when he painted in the impressionist manner, he laid the emphasis on the étude, and when he painted in the naturalistic style he preferred the ébauche and/or the fini; he deliberately chose not to work towards a polished finish and left a clearly visible brushstroke, like in an étude. Subsequently, we refined the painting technique analysis even further by examining Manet’s brushes and their influence on his painter’s handwriting. Following the classification of those technical features, we proceeded to look if and where they occurred in Jobarde. Features such as composition and perspective, light and colour, paint layer and brushstroke displayed clear characteristics of Manet’s handwriting and corresponded to his painting technique in the year 1873.

As a further corroboration, we did not only analyze his painting technique with the naked eye, but also examined Jobarde with modern light techniques such as UV-fluorescence, FC-infrared, infrared reflectography, X-ray and K-edge. This gave conclusive evidence that the stages in the build-up, line types, brushstrokes, traces of revisions with the palette knife, pigments and paint layers in Jobarde are similar to those found in other paintings by Manet. Furthermore, we established that the painting technique of Jobarde most closely resembled that of Le Bon Bock, painted in April and May 1873, Les Travailleurs de la Mer, painted between July and September 1873, and Le Bateau Goudronné, which was completed in the months between those two paintings. If we take another look at the statuses, we see that the examination of the technical build-up, style and composition, perspective, light and color, paint layers and brushstroke, and the comparison of Jobarde to other paintings from 1873 still yield a predominantly neutral status. However, the number of partial features with a positive status increases substantially if those same features are examined with modern light techniques. So there is no question that Manet’s painter’s handwriting can be traced in Jobarde, because certain features of his working method appear not only in the visible top layer, but also in the underlying build-up and texture. These techniques and working methods can

only be linked to Manet.

Technical material research complements art historical and painting technique research by identifying materials and the places where they occur in Manet’s paintings. Following this the properties of the identified materials are cross-referenced with the painting technique of the artist in the object of research. The suppliers of artist’s materials and the earliest stages in the processing of those materials, namely the lead mining industry and the subsequent manufacturing process, were all included in our technical material research.

First, we investigated the suppliers of artist’s materials, the Maisons, whose stamps were found on paintings by Manet. They must have had dealings with Manet and so might also furnish new clues for Jobarde, but this proved not to be the case – which lead to a neutral status. The remarkable fact that the color palette of Jobarde was entirely in agreement with that of other paintings by Manet was nevertheless given a neutral status because it may have been typical of the time.

We then focused on the comparison of lead isotopes in lead white, which is known as a highly objective method of analysis. We started from the assumption that the lead isotope ratio should be regarded as a method for the comparison or linking of paintings rather than as an isolated ‘fingerprint.’ We therefore decided to concentrate on charting the lead mining industry and the trade in lead white paint in the period around 1873, the year in which we had already situated Jobarde. Research revealed that only a limited number of tubes of lead white have a similar lead isotope ratio. This implies that the ratio of lead isotopes in almost every painting has a ‘unique’ make-up. So the obvious thing to do was to compare the lead isotope ratios of Jobarde and Le Bateau Goudronné, which had already proved to be otherwise connected to our painting. The isotope ratio of the samples of both paintings proved to lie within the instrumental measuring error margin and so led us to the conclusion that they have an identical make-up. Jobarde and Le Bateau Goudronné therefore must have been painted within the same short time span during the summer of 1873. As a consequence, this analysis was given the positive status.

When we look at the various results of the three fields of research in conjunction with each other, it seems inevitable that we must attribute Jobarde to Édouard Manet. The accumulation of positive features in addition to an abundance of neutral results and the lack of negative statuses give a positive foundation to this attribution. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that another painter would choose the

same subject matter, color scheme, style and composition as Manet or exhibit the same painter’s handwriting in every layer of the build-up from the invisible étude to the fini or make a painting with a tube of paint that came from the same batch as the one used in Le Bateau Goudronné.

The question remains why Jobarde had escaped attention up to this point, but we can only speculate. Maybe it was simply a personal gift that has long remained in private hands and was cherished by its owners. In any case, we hope that our research will ensure that this gem in Édouard Manet’s oeuvre will now be revealed to the general public.