"The Battle of the "Kearsarge" and the "Alabama"

In the fertile years that followed his D�jeuner and Olympia, Manet experimented very widely. Sometimes he focused on giving form to colour and movement in works like the Bullfight, at others he was inspired by contemporary events, such as the Battle of the “Kearsarge” and the “Alabama” off Cherbourg. This episode of the American Civil War made a considerable impression on public opinion. The work testified to Manet’s modernity, but was also an attempt to renew the theme of naval combat traditional in Dutch painting. It is, in fact, a battle between colour and light, where the blacks and the few dots of red enhance the tumultuous green of the waves.