page_title: Little Lange
section_title: Subject and dating
hierarchical_section_title: Little Lange / Subject and dating
context_page_description: Little Lange is a c.1861 oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet, now on the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. It shows a boy around five years old from the Lange family, who were friends of the artist. Its dark palette is reminiscent of Spanish Golden Age works as well as Antoine Watteau's Gilles. Produced early in the painter's career, the work's execution is sketchy in places and prefigures his later Impressionist work.
context_section_description: Art historians have long had problems identifying the boy portrayed in the painting. The issue is complicated by the work's dating and where it falls in the chronology of Manet's oeuvre. Manet himself placed the dedication "à Mme h. Lange" in the lower left-hand corner of the work, below his signature "éd. Manet" - the art historian Juliet Wilson-Bareau observes that the letter "h" could instead be an "n". The dedication suggests that the boy is a son of a Mrs Lange, though this does not explain the presence of the initial before the surname. On the other hand, the surname Lange is also handwritten in a Manet family photograph album under a carte de visite of a seated man - it was taken in the Dagron studio at 66 rue Neuve des Petits-Champs. Manet's biographer Adolphe Tabarant questioned Léon Leenhoff about the artist's personal environment - Leenhoff was an illegitimate son of Manet, though the painter did not know his paternity. According to Leenhoff, Madame Lange was one of those who attended the weekly Tuesday literary salon held by Manet's wife and mother.
  This photograph album may also offer evidence on the work's precise date, which is unknown. Next to it is a photograph of an unknown girl, on whose back is inscribed the year 1861. This leads Juliet Wilson-Bareau to conclude that Monsieur de Lange's carte de visite dates to the same year. It is therefore plausible to conclude the Manet and Lange families were then directly related. Art historians have also compared Little Lange and its themes to Manet's Child with a Sword (1860-61) and The Old Musician (1862) · .
  More evidence on the Lange family is to be found in letters between the Danish art collector Vilhelm Hansen and Manet's friend and biographer Théodore Duret. In 1916 Hansen became interested in the work and Duret wrote to him that the child in the portrait was one of the sons of a Monsieur Lange. Duret also mentioned that Lange was one of Ferdinand de Lesseps's collaborators on building the Suez Canal - its construction began in 1858. The Wildenstein Institute published a catalogue raisonné of Manet's work in 1975 - Sophie Pietri of the Institute has also supplied information that the boy's father was Daniel Adolphus Lange. No further evidence on the boy's precise identity arose from research for Manet exhibitions in Paris and New York in 2002 and 2003 and so it cannot definitely be identified with Daniel Adolphus Lange's son.
caption: Dedication and signature.
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