Little Girl in an Armchair

Painted in 1878 and now at the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, Little Girl in an Armchair belongs to the series of children's portraits and intimate domestic scenes that Manet produced in the late 1870s. The armchair — a recurring prop in his figure paintings — provides both a compositional framework and a sense of domestic intimacy. By this date Manet was well established among the Impressionist circle while maintaining his own path; he was exhibiting at the Salon rather than the independent Impressionist shows. Children as subjects offered him an opportunity to paint without the charged social meanings that his adult female subjects inevitably carried.

The child is rendered with Manet's characteristic directness — a few confident strokes build the face and costume without sentimentality. The armchair provides a warm ochre surround that frames the figure. The paint is applied with assurance and economy, the child's posture and expression caught with the immediacy that distinguishes Manet's figure painting from more laboured contemporary practice.