21. Edouard Manet
(1832-1883)
Queue Devant la Boucherie (Siège de Paris)

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Manet, Queue Devant la Boucherie (Siège de Paris)

Queue Devant la Boucherie (Siège de Paris)

Etching, 1870-71, Guérin 58 i/ii, Harris 70, Fisher 53, 235 x 158 mm. Very fine impression in dark brown ink with light plate tone on laid paper with full margins, from the Strölin edition of 100, printed in 1905. There was no lifetime edition and the plate was canceled after less than 150 impressions in all were taken. This impression is stamped in red with the number 29 in the lower right corner of the sheet. The paper is slightly darkened in the margins and in the upper and lower areas of the large plate margin where it was covered by the old mat. The subject refers to the siege of Paris in 1870-71, during the Franco-Prussian War, when women lined up outside the butcher shop to buy whatever meat was available.. Rare and precious, the etching is one of the few by Manet that is not a reinterpretation of a painting but was conceived originally as an etching. Michel Melot has said of it: “Manet’s masterpiece of printmaking and a true impressionist print.” In a fine, gold bordered silk mat.