Manet's youngest brother Gustave was a municipal councillor in Paris and it may have been through his mediation that Manet met Clemenceau. Alternatively, the pair may have met at the home of Paul Meurice or Émile Zola.
The portrait was produced at the tribune of the Jardin du Luxembourg, where the city council was sitting; it is sometimes entitled Portrait of Clemenceau at the Tribune. Less realist than the later work of the same title, it stayed in the artist's studio for a long period.[1]
Cachin, Françoise; Moffett, Charles S.; Wilson-Bareau, Juliet (1983). Manet, 1832-1883 : Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 22 avril-1er août 1983, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10 septembre-27 novembre 1983 (in French). Paris: Ministère de la Culture Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux. ISBN2-7118-0230-2. OCLC9663346.
Adolphe Tabarant, Manet et ses œuvres, Paris, Gallimard, 1947, p. 600
Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, Manet raconté par lui-même, vol. 2, t. I, Paris, Henri Laurens, 1926
