Manet’s Woman with Fans (1873)
Erin H. Poe - April 15, 2025
Figure 1: Manet, Édouard. Woman with Fans, 1873. Oil on canvas, 114.0 x 167.0 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. On loan to the Art Institute of Chicago.
At the Art Institute of Chicago, Édouard Manet’s Woman with Fans (1873)—on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris—occupies the spot spot traditionally reserved for Gustave Caillebotte’s 1877 Paris Street; Rainy Day (Figures 1 and 2). As Caillebotte’s renowned work is on loan to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles as part of the exhibition Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World, Manet’s Woman with Fans carries the weight of its predecessor’s absence. After all, the Impressionist galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago are a crowd favorite, with bustling tours circling the rooms eager to witness the best of the nineteenth century.
Figure 2: Caillebotte, Gustave. Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877. Oil on canvas, 212.2 × 276.2 cm. Art Institute of Chicago. On loan to the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
When I visited the painting in person, I stood there for quite some time. Interestingly, even while the gallery was busy, there was a palpable stillness around Woman with Fans. People seemed to stop and glance but rarely lingered in front of the painting. It felt as though, while the rest of the galleries were alive with conversation and movement, Manet’s piece commanded a quiet contemplation. The contrast between the lively space of the gallery and the solitary staging of the figure in the painting only enhanced the work’s sense of isolation.
I had been lucky to have seen the work previously at the Musée d’Orsay on a few occasions, most recently last year. I was reintroduced to this painting, so to speak, at a members-only lecture series at the Art Institute of Chicago. A professor of mine, Dr. Janice Katz, led the discussion on the topic of Japonisme in Impressionist paintings. In this context, I found myself being drawn to the enigmatic presence of the sitter in Woman with Fans and to the deeper narrative beneath the painterly surface.
Figure 3: Manet, Édouard. Olympia, 1863-5. Oil on canvas, 130.5 cm × 190 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
The work is striking but simple in composition: a female figure, fully-clothed, lounges in a pose similar to that of an odalisque—a style that differs from Manet’s earlier, more controversial depiction of Olympia finished a decade before (Figure 3). In Woman with Fans, the arrangement of the female figure’s body, although suggestive of a classical nude, is restrained by her clothing and the serene palette utilized by Manet. Interestingly, located just down the hall from Woman with Fans at the Art Institute is Jules Joseph Lefebvre’s Odalisque from 1874 (Figure 4). Although both works were created in the same time period, Lefebvre’s painting evokes a more traditional Middle Eastern depiction of a courtesan. For nineteenth-century European artists, depicting the nude female form was a fundamental component of academic training, although Manet seems to have ventured beyond mere romanticized depictions.
Figure 4: Lefebvre, Jules Joseph. Odalisque, 1874. Oil on canvas, 102.4 × 200.7 cm. Art Institute of Chicago.
The female figure drapes across a sofa bed that is flanked by a fan-covered folding screen backdrop adorned by Japanese-style fans—Manet was reported to have had his own collection of “props” in the 1870s, one of which was this Japanese screen. The figure, though rendered in a soft, naturalistic palette, appears almost to float against the background, contributing to the notion of an artificial, constructed space rather than a naturalistic one. The work’s depth is also compressed almost onto one tangible plane, and for the viewer, there is no escaping this image’s impression. While at first glance this image may seem an object of allure, its flattened composition challenges the viewer’s perception, forcing them to reconcile both the illusion of depth and the artistic façade. Altogether, Manet challenges traditional portraiture by using loose brushwork and flattened space, which create a sense of intimacy and psychological depth.
The female figure immortalized in Woman with Fans is the one and only Nina de Villard, a wealthy and independent Parisian socialite who lived a short and tumultuous life, passing away at the young age of 41. She hosted with one of the most prominent literary and artistic salons of Paris and was very famous among artist circles in which Manet also operated. Nina de Villard was also celebrated for her reputation as a poet, composer, and pianist. In Woman with Fans, Manet’s studio setting has been quite conformed to Nina’s taste in imported fashion. Notorious for her keen eye for fashion and artistic trends of the time, Manet dons Nina de Villard with an Algerian bolero-style jacket—an item that mirrors the French interest in Algeria in the nineteenth century—and embroidered slippers from Central or Western Asia that are turned up at the toe. Additionally, the sofa bed and the two pillows to prop her up are painted with soft blues and beiges, and Manet’s technique seems to be quite simple overall as his brush disintegrates into individual strokes near the outer edges of the furniture. The backdrop, on the other hand, is quite complex although similarly loose painterly techniques are implemented. It seems that these Japanese fans are affixed to two sides of folding screens that have been flattened and mounted on the wall behind her.
What Manet achieves here is not simply the inclusion of exotic elements for aesthetic purposes, but a nuanced reflection on the changing role of the female form in a modernizing world. Although posed like an odalisque, Manet does not objectify her, but rather acts as a component of the work’s theatricality. Combining both subjective and sympathetic elements in her portrayal, Manet prioritizes symbolic representation over strict realism, focusing on Nina’s exotic clothing and accessories to highlight her cultural and social status. His theatrical composition shifts attention away from a realistic likeness to emphasize a sense of depth and humanity, portraying Nina de Villard as an autonomous individual rather than an object.
Now, while the choice of fans and dress does not seem to be symbolic or intentional other than to create an honest depiction, it is imperative to dive into the cross-cultural exchange that was occurring during this period between Eastern art and Western artists. In 1859, Japan was forced to open their gates to international trade, a luxury previously reserved for Dutch traders, and in 1867, Japan participated in the Paris Exposition Universelle, marking the first world’s fair in which general audiences were introduced to Japanese art.
Figure 5: Manet, Édouard. Portrait of Émile Zola, 1868. Oil on canvas, 146.5 cm × 114 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Manet’s Portrait of Émile Zola (1868) represents this new fascination with works of the East (Figure 5). The Japanese screen and Utagawa Kuniaki II’s wrestler print, placed alongside Olympia and an engraving of Diego Velázquez’s Bacchus, are clear examples of the integration of Japonisme into Western painting. The Japanese screen—as seen dominantly in Woman with Fans as well—can also be seen in his 1876 portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé, a woman whom he had met at one of Nina de Villard’s parties, and in Nana (1877), where the screen has been altered from gold to blue. Other artists—notably the Impressionists—from Manet’s time operated within this Japonisme world. Auguste Renoir’s Women with a Fan (1879) and Claude Monet’s La Japonaise (1876) are just two examples that point to a major cross-cultural exchange between Japan and the burgeoning Impressionist movement. In sum, these works carry deeper connotations of how Japan was viewed and understood as an exotic backdrop that could be appropriated into the Western artistic narrative.
The immersion of Japanese influences in Western art, particularly in Woman with Fans, can be seen as a product of the transformative impact that the Japanese artistic style had on European painting. Manet took artistic license with this work, but the fashionability of Eastern art and the desire to incorporate it all into clothing, homes, and painterly studios contributes to the idea that these Japanese artistic concepts and techniques were often divorced from their original contexts when they were adapted to Western artistic purposes.
Furthermore, the screen, the fan, and the rich Orientalized garments worn by Nina de Villard perhaps hint at the commodification of the female form within the context of contemporary European visual culture. While the focus on the alluring woman seems seductive, it is also perhaps a reflection of the way in which women were often placed within exoticized settings, where their identity and autonomy were secondary to the exotic and sensual fantasies projected onto them. As the female sitter inhabits this exoticized space, she also becomes part of a larger cultural commentary, suggesting that the exoticization of the East and the Western commodification of femininity are not separate phenomena but intertwined in the art that defines this period. This raises an important question about Manet’s intentions. Is he merely perpetuating these fantasies, or is he critiquing the role of women as commodities in the same way he critiques the commodification of Eastern art and culture? Or, further, is he endowing Nina de Villard, a modern woman, with agency and control over her image? In a world where femininity and the exotic became intertwined, Woman with Fans forces us to consider whether the objectification of both the female body and foreign culture was an inevitable result of their Western consumption.
In conclusion, the nineteenth-century cross-cultural dialogue between the East and the West is unmistakably evident in Manet’s Woman with Fans. His depiction of Nina de Villard may not directly critique the commodification of either women or Eastern culture, but in engaging with the fascination of Japonisme, Manet perpetuates a visual language that reflects the West’s fascination with exoticism and female beauty.
As a last note, Manet’s work, having been sent across the sea from its home museum, is itself divorced from its original context, much like the Japonisme elements are separated from their original cultural origins. Being the first image one sees upon entering the Impressionist galleries, the upfront and attracting work has a large role to fill. While Paris Street; Rainy Day can perhaps be taken at a surface level—a couple walking through newly-Hausmannized France—despite having a deeper meaning, Manet’s Woman with Fans may trouble viewers at the Art Institute. The contrast between the two paintings in the space is striking: Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day is large, open, and full of movement, whereas Woman with Fans is a more intimate, contained piece, with a narrative that is not quite set or digestible, prompting a further dive into the staging of the alluring female figure. Ultimately, Woman with Fans becomes a complex site of reflection, where the viewer is invited to engage in a critique of the ways in which cultures and bodies are both commodified and constructed through art, pushing them to confront the tensions between perception, objectification, and artistic intent.
