A small drawing kept in a private collection in Italy has been identified as the work of Édouard Manet, one of the most famous French painters of the 1800s. The drawing is made with red chalk and shows a young girl crouching down. It measures just 20.5 by 17.5 centimetres (about 8 by 7 inches).

The story began when art historian Francesco Baccanelli visited a small, little-known collection in northern Italy. The owner showed him a note written on the back of the drawing that said it was by Manet. No art expert had ever studied it. “I was completely captivated by it,” Baccanelli said. The more he looked, the more sure he felt that the note was right, so he contacted Emily Beeny, a top Manet expert and chief curator at the Legion of Honor, an art museum in San Francisco.

Beeny gets many messages from people who think they own a Manet, but she said this was the only one so far that gave her “an immediate sense of recognition.” She also said that a new, unknown Manet drawing had not been found in many years.

The experts gave several reasons for their decision. The sharp changes between light and dark areas are typical of Manet, and so are the girl’s plump fingers, which get thinner at the ends. When they shone ultraviolet light on the paper, they found a faded stamp with the letters “E.M.” in the bottom right corner. It matches the stamp used in Manet’s studio.

The girl looks a lot like a child in one of Manet’s best-known paintings, The Old Musician, from 1862. That painting now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Beeny thinks the same person may have posed for both.

Manet drew a grid of squares over the drawing, something artists did when they wanted to copy a small sketch onto a larger canvas. This means he probably planned to use the girl in a painting, but no finished painting of her is known. “For now, the drawing’s original purpose remains as mysterious as its early history,” Beeny and Baccanelli wrote.

The two experts are sharing their research in the October issue of The Burlington Magazine, a well-known British art journal. The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, which keeps the official list of Manet’s works, has not studied the drawing yet.

Sources: The Guardian, Smithsonian, Artnet

A modest red chalk sketch of a crouching girl, held in a private collection in northern Italy, has been attributed to Édouard Manet, the French painter whose bold, unconventional work helped pave the way for modern art. Measuring just 20.5 by 17.5 centimetres (about 8 by 7 inches), the drawing is thought to date from the 1850s or 1860s, when Manet made a number of life studies in red chalk.

Its rediscovery came about almost by chance. Art historian Francesco Baccanelli was visiting “a small and little-known collection” when the owner pointed out an inscription on the back naming Manet as the artist. No scholar had ever examined the claim. “I was completely captivated by it,” Baccanelli said. “The more I studied it, the more convinced I became that it was indeed a work by Manet.” He then contacted Emily Beeny, chief curator at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and one of the world’s leading Manet specialists.

Beeny is used to hopeful messages from people who believe they own a Manet, but this one stood out. It was, she said, “the only one so far that has given me an immediate sense of recognition.” She pointed to “the abrupt transitions between light and shadow, and the peculiar plump, tapered fingers,” which she called “little figural tics that are very characteristic of Manet.” Ultraviolet light then revealed a faded “E.M.” stamp in the lower right corner, matching the mark used by Manet’s studio.

The girl closely resembles a figure in The Old Musician (1862), a canvas about 2.4 metres (8 feet) wide that now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Beeny believes the same model may have posed for both. Her face also recalls Alexandre, a boy who worked in Manet’s studio in the late 1850s and sometimes sat for him, while her pose echoes one of the women in Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863).

Manet had also squared the sketch, covering it with a grid so the image could be scaled up onto a larger canvas. “It’s clearly a drawing with which he took some time and effort, and with which he was pleased,” Beeny said. Yet no finished painting featuring the crouching girl is known. As the two researchers put it, “the drawing’s original purpose remains as mysterious as its early history.”

Beeny and Baccanelli set out their case in the October issue of The Burlington Magazine, a respected British art journal. The attribution has yet to be reviewed by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, which compiles the catalogue raisonné, the official record of all Manet’s known works.

Sources: The Guardian, Smithsonian, Artnet