Édouard Manet’s Le Ballon. Lithograph depicting the Fête de L’Empereur, an annual festival at which large crowds of Parisians would gather to enjoy balloon rides and other popular entertainments.
Photograph by Robert Kato

Édouard Manet (1832–1883)
Le Ballon (The Balloon)
Lithograph, 1862
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Collection

Le Ballon (The Balloon)

When publisher Alfred Cadart invited Édouard Manet to develop a lithograph for a portfolio in the hopes of launching a lithography revival, the artist created a work of stunning audaciousness. Manet chose as his subject the Fête de L’Empereur, a festival held annually on August 15th to commemorate Napoleon I’s birthday, a day on which large crowds of Parisians would gather to enjoy balloon rides and other popular entertainments. The artist rendered the scene with thick, dynamic strokes of the lithographic crayon, creating a composition so bold as to verge at times on total abstraction. Too radical for its time, the work was not considered worthy of reproduction, and Cadart jettisoned his plans for the portfolio. This rare print is one of only five impressions.

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