Portrait of Countess Albazzi

Portrait of Countess Albazzi (1880), at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, belongs to Manet's final decade when his social connections gave him access to sitters drawn from the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie alongside his more bohemian portraiture. The Countess Albazzi—an Italian noblewoman—represents the international social world that Paris attracted and that Manet moved in with increasing ease as his reputation was gradually acknowledged. The Guggenheim's holding of this work reflects American collecting's twentieth-century appetite for Impressionist portraiture as evidence of belle époque social life at its most elegant.

The aristocratic subject likely prompted Manet to deploy his full repertoire of elegant paint handling—the fluid brushwork reserved for fashionable dress, the careful attention to jewellery and hair as markers of social identity. The face is painted with his characteristic directness, achieving a vivid likeness without the idealising smoothness of academic portraiture. The overall impression would balance social refinement with the underlying physical candour of his approach.