Stéphane Mallarmé

This portrait was painted in 1876, the year of the publication of Mallarmé's Après-midi d'un faune, a long poem illustrated by engravings by Manet. The previous year, the painter and writer had already worked together on an illustrated translation of The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe. Their friendship went back to 1873 and for almost ten years the two men met every day to discuss painting, literature, and the new aesthetic as well as cats and woman's fashion. As he had done with Zola in 1866, Manet undertook this portrait to thank Mallarmé for an article published in an English magazine.