‘The Luncheon’, a canvas three feet nine inches high and five feet wide, dominates the opening gallery of the Royal Academy’s exhibition Manet: Portraying Life (until 14 April). In a sense it dominates the whole show, since the deep charcoal grey in which all the RA’s first-floor galleries have been painted takes its cue from the painting’s background hue. Spotlights, not daylight, illuminate them: you might be in some freaky nightclub, except that the grey gets recast as brightness by the extraordinary block of black springing out at you from just off centre in The Luncheon. Around this magnetic weight, which represents a pea coat, there cluster various off-whites: a striped collar, a youth’s pale cheeks, his boater and his summer trousers, plus the chequered damask covering the dining table he’s leaning against, and a flowerpot in the dim room behind. Attune your eyes to that room, and two figures slot into place either side of the pea coat, a bearded male sat puffing at a cheroot and a serving maid set in quotes: that’s to say, archly summarised, like a gag too weary to need a punchline; secondhand, pre-looked.

LRB 21 February 2013 | PDF Download