a blind flaneur

Édouard Manet. Portrait of George Moore. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Stéphane Mallarmé with Méry Laurant. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]
George Moore remembers Méry and Manet in Memoirs of My Dead Life:
Were she not dead I might stop at her little
house in the fortifications among the lilac trees. There is her
portrait by Manet on the wall, the very toque she used to wear. How
wonderful the touch is; the […]

Paul Cézanne. Self-portrait. 1875.
From Jeffrey Meyers’ Impressionist Quartet (p. 168):
The Impressionists had social as well as artistic differences, and the less well off were more Bohemian. Though Paul Cézanne came from a prosperous family in Aix, he adopted a defiant pose, exaggerated his southern accent, and wore a battered old hat, blue worker’s overalls and […]

Edgar Degas. The Cotton Exchange. 1873
From Jeffrey Meyers’ Impressionist Quartet (p. 168):
Though Degas recruited the Impressionist painters, he freely criticized their work. He maintained that Monet created nothing but beautiful decorations, and at an exhibition of brightly colored paintings he dramatically exclaimed: “‘Let me out of here. Those reflections in the water hurt my […]

Edgar Degas. Spartan Girls Provoking Boys. c.1860-62. National Gallery, London.
I’ve never cared much for the paintings of Edgar Degas. I’ve stood before his canvases at the National Gallery of Art many times over the years, but they failed to move me. This includes the portrait of his sister-in-law from New Orleans, Madame René de […]