The $65 Million Spring

Christie’s, New York, 2014. Phones light up. The bidding climbs past the price of many houses, then many museums’ annual acquisitions budgets. When the hammer falls, Manet’s Jeanne (Spring) shatters a record and the Getty wins the picture for $65.1 million—a new pinnacle for the artist at auction ³¹.

Why this painting? Not Olympia. Not A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. A young woman in profile with a lace hat and a cream parasol—Jeanne Demarsy, a model-actress, cast as the personification of Spring. On paper, it’s simple. On a wall, it hits like a billboard: bright, legible, instantly memorable. The kind of image museums dream of.

The stakes were public. If a museum didn’t win, Jeanne risked vanishing back into a private vault. The Getty made the case bluntly: this wasn’t just a pretty face; it was one of the most admired late Manets, and among the finest works by the artist left in private hands before the sale ¹². They were buying an icon for Los Angeles—and the bragging rights that come with it.

“World auction record for the artist.” ³

That’s the phrase Christie’s stamped on the result. Translation: a new line in the market’s ledger for what Manet can cost, and a public test of how much we’re willing to pay to keep a masterpiece visible.

Rewind to 1882. Manet exhibits Spring at the Paris Salon while gravely ill, a late-career pivot toward modern beauty and fashion that critics actually celebrate. The costume isn’t window dressing; it’s the message. As the Art Institute later summarized, his final years were marked by “his fascination with modern fashion” ⁴.

Here’s the twist: the picture didn’t simply climb because connoisseurs whispered about brushwork. It became famous because it went viral—19th-century style. Soon after the Salon, the image was mechanically reproduced as a photogravure by G. A. M. Cros and widely disseminated, turning Jeanne into a shared visual currency across parlors and shop windows ^[10]3.

Mass reproduction sounds like the enemy of rarity. In art-market logic, it can be rocket fuel. The more walls a reproduction touched, the more the single, hand-painted original accrued cultural gravity. By 2014, bidders weren’t just chasing a canvas; they were bidding on the irreplaceable source file for a picture millions already knew.

Manet planned a quartet of Seasons—Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter—but completed only two before his death. Scarcity sharpened the hunger. Spring was the breakout star, its model Demarsy bringing an actress’s persona to a timeless allegory; Autumn followed with Méry Laurent. The series’ incompletion is part of the painting’s charge: it’s the most perfect piece of an unfinished idea ^[6]1.

Auction rooms run on story, and Spring had one you could summarize in a breath: the late Manet, at the peak of modern elegance, painting a fashion-forward goddess who became the “it” image of her day—then disappeared into a private collection for generations. When the Getty announced the acquisition, journalists didn’t need a press kit; the picture had already done its own PR for over a century ^12[8].

“Modern fashion” and myth, fused. ⁴

If you think that reads like advertising language, you’re not wrong. That’s the reversal: what purists once dismissed as ‘mere fashion’ is exactly what made the painting valuable. Fashion is coded time. Manet was savvy enough to sell us Spring as a look—and the market, 130 years later, paid couture prices.

The Getty’s win also revealed a new reality: in the 21st century, only a handful of public institutions can go twelve rounds with private wealth in the global salerooms. When one of them actually lands the punch, it resets expectations for what museums can—and should—fight for. The result vaulted Manet’s top line and gave Los Angeles a face of modernity that reads across languages and ages in a single glance ^[7][9].

So yes, a hat, a glove, a parasol. But also a wager: that a picture born in the salon and amplified in print could become the rarest of 21st‑century luxuries—an image everybody knows that you can only see, for real, in one public place. That’s what $65 million bought. And that’s why the line still forms in front of Jeanne (Spring) at the Getty—and on every link that shows her face, from the museum site to this quick primer on the work’s meaning [/artworks/edouard-manet/jeanne-spring][PM].

Notes
[PM] Painting Meanings – Jeanne (Spring): https://painting-meanings.com/artworks/edouard-manet/jeanne-spring
¹ Getty – Manet’s Spring acquisition overview: https://www.getty.edu/news/manet-spring-acquisition/
² Getty Iris – This Just In: Édouard Manet, Spring: https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/this-just-in-edouard-manet-spring/
³ Christie’s – Lot essay and sale result for Le Printemps: https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-5840859
⁴ Art Institute of Chicago – Manet and Modern Beauty (press release): https://www.artic.edu/press/press-releases/269/manet-and-modern-beauty
^[6] Getty – The Women Behind Édouard Manet’s Seasons: https://www.getty.edu/news/the-women-behind-edouard-manets-seasons/
^[7] Getty – Manet, Spring (acquisition overview): https://www.getty.edu/news/manet-spring-acquisition/
^[8] Getty Iris – This Just In: Édouard Manet, Spring: https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/this-just-in-edouard-manet-spring/
^[9] Getty – Exhibition overview: Manet and Modern Beauty: https://www.getty.edu/news/getty-presents-manet-and-modern-beauty/
^[10] Christie’s – Note on Cros photogravure dissemination: https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-5840859