The opera Carmen depicts a tragic love story set in Seville, Spain about a country girl and her conflicting love interests. Appealing to their exotic taste, Carmen exposed the traditions of gypies and the bullfight to 19th century French, cultured society. Increasing French curiosity about the bullfight, the character Escamillo (the bullfighter) sings one of the most famous songs from Carmen, the "Toreador Song". The popularity and genuis of Prosper Merimee and Georges Bizet's masterpiece, inspired Eduoard Manet to use these themes in many of his early and late works. Manet's portrait of The Gypsy with a Cigarette, which hangs in the Princeton University Art Museum, portrays a gypsy similiar to Carmen, the cigarette factory worker(Bois 13 and 78). Illustrating a Carmen-like gypsy vallidates Manet's interest in the opera Carmen, and its foreign, Spanish themes. The work, like his other early works, reflects the exotic character in a pose rather than in action. This supplements the fact that Manet represented exotic portraits and posed works as theatrical spectacles.
Continuing his love for Spanish culture well after his trip to Spain, Manet, in 1880, painted the opera singer, Emilie Ambre. Ambre commissioned Manet to paint her as her favorite character, Carmen (152). In Portrait of Emilie Ambre in the Role of Carmen, Manet returns to the theatrical side in pose and costume of Spanish culture. However, this work reaffirms his interest in Spanish pop culture which apparently had stayed in France since the mid- 19th century.
(Top) Eduoard Manet, Gypsy with Cigarette, 1862. Oil on Canvas. Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey.
(Bottom) Eduoard Manet, Portrait of Emilie Ambre in the Role of Carmen, 1880. Oil on Canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.