There are, to be sure, many better photos of this painting, but it is the photo that I took, so I am featuring it.
James Tissot, a painter, and also a great collector, owned this painting first. Tissot and Manet travelled to
Venice together in the fall of 1874, and Tissot bought Manet’s Blue Venice on March 24, 1875 for 2,500 francs.
Manet badly needed the income. Tissot hung the painting in his home in
St. John’s Wood, London, and did his best to interest English dealers
in Manet’s work. Manet died on April 30, 1883; in 1884, while Tissot owned it, Blue Venice
was included in a retrospective exhibition of Manet’s work, organized
as a tribute, in Paris. By August 25, 1891, Tissot sold the picture to
contemporary art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831 – 1922), and in 1895,
Durand-Ruel sold it as Vue de Venise (View of Venice) to Mr. and
Mrs. Henry O. Havemeyer, New York, for $12,000. A prominent art
collector, Mrs. Havemeyer (1855 – 1929) named the painting Blue Venice. After the deaths of the Havemeyers, their youngest child, Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888-1960), owned Blue Venice
from 1929 until her death. She had founded The Shelburne Museum in
Vermont in 1947, and Manet’s painting entered the collection there in
1960, where it remains today.
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