The Croquet Game
The Croquet Game is an 1873 oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet, now in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. It shows a group of people playing croquet, a very fashionable game at that time. The group comprises the painter Alfred Stevens, artists' models Victorine Meurent and Alice Lecouvé and, in the background, Manet's friend Paul Roudier.
This painting was bought by the impressionist art collector Albert Hecht. After his death the paint passed to his daughter Suzanne Hecht Pontremoli.
In style this painting represented Manet's closest approach to impressionism.
In 1871, Manet had painted another work with the same name — La partie de croquet — which has been translated as Croquet at Boulogne and, in Manet: A Model Family, as The Croquet Party. In Manet: A Model Family, Aimee Marcereau Degalan identifies the people portrayed, from left to right, as Paul Roudier, Jeanne Gonzalès, Léon Leenhoff, Marie-Céline Ragut or Eugénie Manet, and Suzanne Manet.
The 1879, the painting was purchased from Manet by French painter Gustave Caillebotte. It is now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, which calls it The Croquet Party.