Portrait of Henri Rochefort

Manet painted Henri Rochefort's portrait in 1881, the year after the fiery journalist and politician returned from his notorious escape from New Caledonian exile — the subject of Manet's other famous Rochefort canvas. Rochefort was a republican polemicist who had been deported after the Paris Commune and whose daring seaborne escape had become a cause célèbre. Manet's sympathies with republican politics made Rochefort an ideologically congenial sitter, and the portrait belongs to the series of late-career character studies — Clemenceau, Antonin Proust — in which Manet matched psychological acuity with increasingly fluid paint handling.

Manet places Rochefort against a near-neutral dark background, allowing the face and his characteristically wild grey hair to carry the portrait's entire expressive burden. The brushwork is swift and summary — a few decisive strokes define the nose, the set of the jaw, and the glint of the eye — with no concession to finish or flattery.