Focus on this artwork and explain the Manet's Flaneuse: Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus.
Manet's Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus has been considered a sketch for The Balcony. As a preparatory sketch for the finished product, Mademoiselle Claus' portrait captures the artist's overarching intentions. It is her peering eyes over the balcony that suggest her position as a flaneuse, the feminine equivalent to the flâneur who would have been described at the time as a passante. Nesci (2007) introduces the concept of the flaneuse and positions the existence of this feminine figure as early as the 1830s. By scrutinising the masculine figure of the flaneur and uncovering the figure of the flaneuse, "helps us question the conditions of inclusion and exclusion of public urban life". Both the balcony context of The Balcony and the Portrait depict this question of inclusion and exclusion of public urban life, placing women on a balcony peering onto (and therefore gazing) the public urban life, whilst retaining a close physical proximity with their domestic environment (the inside of the house alluded to by the dark space between the two green windows. This act of gazing onto public urban life and reflecting on it without being a part of it is "central to the definition of the flaneur". Manet's The Balcony and the individual sketches he produced prior to the full composition and therefore examples of what 21st century scholars are unravelling in their scrutiny of the masculine flaneur and uncovering of the existence of a very present flaneuse.
flâneur