Professor Butter Beard and Manet’s “A Boy with Cherries”
“Life is just a bowl of cherries,
Don’t take it serious,
It’s mysterious.
Life is just a bowl of cherries,
So live and laugh
And laugh at love,
Love a laugh,
Laugh and love.” – Bob Fosse
My grandfather planted two cherry trees. He specifically placed them between his sons’ clubhouse and the entrance to his bountiful vegetable and berry garden. A part of me believes he planted them for me and my brother, but that could be a glossy interpretation of a childhood memory. What I do remember clearly is standing below the branches as my grandfather shook them and giggling as the ripe cherries showered over me as I tried to catch them in my gardening basket. Half were popped directly into my mouth, spitting the seeds towards my brother, and the rest were baked into a soul-satisfying pie by my talented grandmother.
I recognize my “cherry giggle” on the face of Édouard Manet’s “The Boy With Cherries.” It is one of his early works, painted in 1859, and art historians consider it a good example of how one great master identifies with another even when young and little known. Manet painted it a few years after his trip to Italy where he had seen and copied works by the fifteenth-century master, Perugino, who had significantly been Raphael’s teacher.
Manet's joyful portrait shows a young blond-haired luminous boy with a sweet smile leaning on a stone wall while cupping a bowl of brilliantly red cherries. The model here is said to be Manet’s studio assistant Alexandre, who according to the poet Charles Baudelaire enjoyed a “intemperate taste for sugar and brandy.” Just fifteen, he was engaged by Manet to clean his brushes and palette and occasionally pose for him for extra pocket money. The artist darkened his hair within a second portrait painted the following year (“Boy With A Dog”), but it is easy to recognize the same youthful facial features.
The tale of Alexandre has a tragic ending. Manet knew the lad was subject to fits of depression. One foggy Paris evening, the artist went searching for Alexandre for a sitting only to find him dead, hanging by a rope, in a corner of the studio in the rue Lavoisier that Manet share with Albert de Balleroy. The tragedy inspired Baudelaire to compose his prose poem “La Corde,” dedicated to his friend Manet and first published in Le Figaro on February 7th, 1864.
Manet's public career lasted from 1861, the year two canvases were accepted at the Paris Salon, until his death in 1883. His known existing works, as catalogued in 1975 by Denis Rouart and Daniel Wildenstein, comprise 430 oil paintings, 89 pastels, and more than 400 works on paper.
Although harshly condemned by critics who condemned its lack of “conventional finish,” Manet's work had passionate admirers from the beginning. One was Émile Zola, who wrote in 1867: “We are not accustomed to seeing such simple and direct translations of reality. Then, as I said, there is such a surprisingly elegant awkwardness... it is a truly charming experience to contemplate this luminous and serious painting which interprets nature with a gentle brutality.”
My favorite quote of Manet is his response to his critics: “I paint what I see, and not what others choose to see.” Well said, my friend! You inspire me to bake what I love to taste combining the spices, textures and colors that dance in my dreams. My summer sweet cherry pie is accented with ground allspice and fresh ginger and wrapped in a flaky crust that crunches with toasted almond slices. It may not be my grandmother’s pie, or Agent Cooper’s, or even Jenna’s, but it is most certainly a Butter Beard dream come true.
Butter Beard’s Sweet Cherry Pie
One 10” pie
Almond Crust:
2 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup sliced almonds, toasted and then chilled
4 Tbsp granulated sugar
½ tsp fine sea salt
16 Tbsp (two sticks) unsalted butter, chilled
1 Tbsp white vinegar and enough cold water to equal ½ cup liquid
Filling:
5 cups sweet cherries, pitted
2 tsp freshly grated ginger root
½ cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
2 ½ Tbsp cornstarch
½ tsp fine sea salt
½ tsp ground allspice
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
Egg wash and sanding sugar to top the pie before baking
1) The crust: In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, toasted (and chilled) almond slices, sugar and salt. Using a box grater, grate the butter over the dry mix. Lightly toss together with your fingers. Add the liquid and squeeze together into a dough. Divide the dough into half, wrap each half in plastic wrap, and chill for at least one hour.
2) Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
3) Toss the pitted cherries with the freshly grated ginger root. In a separate bowl, whisk together sugar, flour, cornstarch, salt and allspice. Fold the dry mixture into the cherries and mix until evenly combined.
4) Roll out one of the doughs to fit the bottom of your pie plate. Roll out the second dough into a 9x12” rectangle. Slice the rectangle into eight long strips. Pour the cherry filling into your dough-lined pie plate. Dot the butter in small pieces over the cherry filling. Lattice the eight strips over the filling. Brush the top of the lattice with an egg wash and generously sprinkle with sanding sugar.
5) Bake the pie at 425 for fifteen minutes, reduce the heat to 375 and bake for another 45 minutes until the filling is bubbling and aromatic.
6) Let the pie cool on a wire rack for at least three hours so the filling can settle and bind the fruit before slicing.
Nadar, Édouard Manet before 1870.
Édouard Manet, “A Boy With A Dog,” 1861, oil on canvas.
