Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Naked woman picnics with two clothed men; the scandal of the 1863 Salon des Refusés
Image: Édouard Manet · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Art
Édouard Manet
1832–1883 · French
Realism / Impressionism
Parisian painter who bridged Realism and Impressionism, scandalising the Salon with modern-life subjects painted in flat, bold tones. Often called the father of modern art, he inspired the Impressionists yet never exhibited in their group shows.
How to spot them
- ▸Flat, strongly lit figures with harsh contrasts and little modelling; lots of black
- ▸Old Master compositions (Titian, Raphael, Goya, Velázquez) restaged with modern Parisians
- ▸A nude or woman staring coolly straight out at the viewer
- ▸Café, bar and boulevard scenes of 1860s–80s Paris
Key works
Olympia (1863)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Reworks Titian's Venus of Urbino; black maid with flowers and a black cat at the bed's foot; outraged the 1865 Salon
Image: Édouard Manet · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)
Courtauld Gallery, London
His last major work: a barmaid before a mirror whose reflection doesn't quite add up
Image: Édouard Manet · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Music in the Tuileries (1862)
National Gallery, London (Lane Bequest, shared with Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin)
Fashionable crowd including Baudelaire, Offenbach and Manet himself
Image: Édouard Manet · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1867–1869)
Kunsthalle Mannheim (final version); fragments in the National Gallery, London
Firing squad in Mexico, modelled on Goya's The Third of May 1808
Image: Édouard Manet · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Fifer (1866)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Boy musician against a flat, featureless background, inspired by Velázquez
Image: Édouard Manet · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Quick-fire facts
- •Victorine Meurent modelled for both Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia
- •Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe borrows its group from Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving after Raphael's Judgement of Paris
- •He never showed at any of the eight Impressionist exhibitions, preferring the official Salon
- •The painter Berthe Morisot, who often sat for him, married his brother Eugène
- •Monet organised the public subscription that bought Olympia for the French state in 1890
- •A Bar at the Folies-Bergère was first owned by his friend the composer Emmanuel Chabrier
- •Émile Zola defended him in print, and Manet painted Zola's portrait (1868)
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Édouard Manet
- The National Gallery, London — Édouard Manet
- The Courtauld — A Bar at the Folies-Bergère