■j:> ib 7
LES GITAXOS,
ou V Amour paternel.
Qui est-ce qui veut me débarrasser de ça?
<7je lui donne le moucheron et ma bénédiction
^par-dessus le marché.

2. Gilbert Rasndon: Les Gitanes ou L'Amourpaternal, 1867, woodcut.
Repro: TINTEROIL, G. — LACAMBRE, G.: Manet/Velâzquez:
the French Taste for Spanish Painting. New York — New Haven
- London 2003, p. 215, fig. 9.19.

Manet appears to hâve adapted imagery from
an apocryphal religions theme historically linked to
early myths about the origins of Gypsies. He uses
this imagery to illustrate three of the éléments that
commonly arose in the Gypsy-Bohemian discourses
current in Paris. The minimalist setting signais pov-
erty; the water-drinker could be a member of Henri

Murger’s Society of Water-Drinkers, bohemians too
poor to afford one of France’s abundant vins ordi-
naires. He also brings to the picture unconventional
familial associations; while a commitment to the arts
is typified by the central figure carrying a guitar.* * * 4
Why did Manet make a work depicting a Gypsy
guitarist as one of his first etchings? The principal
figure changes so markedly from the first etching to
the second that the same person cannot hâve mod-
elled both. It is reasonable therefore to conclude
that this is not the portrait of a musician known to
the artist. In fact there is no evidence Manet had any
personal knowledge of or interaction with musicians
who could be construed as Gypsy at this point in
his life. The situation was different by the middle of
the decade. Then Manet knew and was friendly with
the Catalan composer and guitar player Jaime Bosch
(1826 — 1895). In 1866, he made a lithograph of the
guitarist playing his instrument, used as the cover for
Bosch’s composition Moorish Lament. Nonetheless,
in these earlier works he displays a commitment to
the notion of Gypsies’ créative musical flair, a flair
he both portrays and indexes. The central position
given to the guitar reflects the relevance of Gypsy
music to Manet’s ideas about his artistic practice.
Moreover, the first of the sériés captures a feeling of
spontaneity and improvisation in its loose facture and
careless execution. In his disregard for academically
correct drawing and indifférence to traditional per-
spective, Manet is undertaking here the most radical
rejection of the conventions for fine drawing in his
early artistic Output. So radical, in fact, that the print
was never published.
The role given to music in these early images no
doubt also grew out of Manet’s covert relationship
with Suzanne Leenhoff, a young unmarried mother
he was shortly to marry. Numerous anecdotes testify
she was an exceptional pianist. That mixture of art
and biography is a recognised aspect of these Gypsy
images.5 More importantly, however, these works

Magi (1844) which also “transformed and moderni^ed” an an-
cien! formula. See KOVACS, 1.: The Portrait of Liszt as an
Allegory of the Artist in Ary Scheffer’s Three Magi. In: Studia
musicologica, 49, 2008, p. 97. I discuss Manet’s knowledge of
this painting passim.
4 MURGER, H.: Les buveurs d’eau. Paris 1855. In Antonin
Proust’s biography there are three references to Manet know-

ing Murger. — PROUST, A.: Edouard Manet souvenirs. Paris
1996, pp. 13-15.
5 In his cartoon satirizing Manet’s painting, Randon notes the
art/life balance being overturned by the woman’s crying baby.
His caption below the image begins with the name Les Gitanes,
to which he adds a sub-title “(or) Paternal lové’. Then, with
further text, he puts the following (translated) words in the

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