Description
Manet sets a spreading shadow across the foreground floor, with a partly open door at the left and furniture within the room. The shadow becomes a substantial presence in this illustration to Poe’s The Raven, giving the poem’s final image a graphic setting of its own. The contrast between outlined objects and stronger darkness keeps the floor central to the encounter.
Dated 1875, the work is a transfer lithograph on laid paper in its only recorded state. Poe is the author of the source poem, with Stéphane Mallarmé credited as translator rather than as a maker of the lithograph. The image belongs to a meeting of literary language and graphic form, allowing the poem’s atmosphere to be approached through looking. Its interest lies in the way an illustration can preserve a particular passage while retaining its own visual space and material character.
Read our guide to giclée prints, browse more Édouard Manet prints, or explore Perched upon a Bust of Pallas.
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