Open Here I Flung the Shutter. Illustration to The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Description

An open window frames the encounter in Édouard Manet’s illustration to The Raven, with a dark bird crossing the upper left and a man inside at the right. Hatching gathers shadow around the figures and opening. The composition gives the arrival a threshold, connecting an enclosed human space to something entering from beyond it without overexplaining the scene’s unease.

Made in 1875, the transfer lithograph illustrates Edgar Allan Poe’s poem in its French translation by Stéphane Mallarmé. The title, Open Here I Flung the Shutter, identifies a particular moment in the text. Manet makes that event tangible through the division between interior and outside, allowing drawn marks to carry a mood that does not depend on color. The image brings a literary encounter close while preserving the uncertainty that gives the poem its imaginative force.

Read our guide to giclée prints, browse more Édouard Manet prints, or explore Perched upon a Bust of Pallas.