Prints and Authors in the Time of Manet

Charles Meryon in Bed

Etching, 1858
Museum purchase, 1922.100

In the mid-1850s, Charles Meryon was stricken with bouts of mental instability, a condition which gradually worsened. Friends, like Léopold Flameng, frequently visited Meryon to encourage him. On May 11, 1858, Flameng drew the artist sitting up in bed, staring into space. The next day, Meryon was taken to the asylum at Charenton, where he was diagnosed as “Suffering from melancholy madness, complicated by delusion.” Although he was released over a year later, he was again at Charenton in 1866, and he died there in February 1868.