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Édouard Manet

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Artists

   Articles with similar titles include Claude Monet, another painter of
   the same era.
   Édouard Manet
   portrait by Nadar
   Birth name   Édouard Manet
           Born January 23, 1832
                Paris
           Died April 30, 1883
                Paris
    Nationality French
          Field Painting
   Famous works The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe), 1863

                Olympia , 1863
                A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère), 1882

   Édouard Manet ( January 23, 1832 – April 30, 1883) was a French
   painter. One of the first nineteenth century artists to approach
   modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from
   Realism to Impressionism. His early masterworks The Luncheon on the
   Grass and Olympia engendered great controversy, and served as rallying
   points for the young painters who would create Impressionism—today
   these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of
   modern art.

Biography

Early life

   Édouard Manet was born in Paris in 1832 to an affluent and well
   connected family. His mother, Eugénie-Desirée Fournier, was the
   goddaughter of the Swedish crown prince, Charles Bernadotte, from whom
   the current Swedish monarchs are descended. His father, Auguste Manet,
   was a French judge who expected Édouard to pursue a career in law. His
   uncle, Charles Fournier, encouraged him to pursue painting and often
   took young Manet to the Louvre.

   From 1850 to 1856, after failing the examination to join the navy,
   Manet studied under the academic painter Thomas Couture. In his spare
   time he copied the old masters in the Louvre.

   He visited Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, during which time he
   absorbed the influences of the Dutch painter Frans Hals, and the
   Spanish artists Diego Velázquez and Francisco José de Goya.

   In 1856, he opened his own studio. His style in this period was
   characterized by loose brush strokes, simplification of details, and
   the suppression of transitional tones. Adopting the current style of
   realism initiated by Gustave Courbet, he painted The Absinthe Drinker
   (1858-59) and other contemporary subjects such as beggars, singers,
   Gypsies, people in cafés, and bullfights. After his early years, he
   rarely painted religious, mythological, or historical subjects;
   examples include his Christ Mocked, now in the Art Institute of
   Chicago, and Christ with Angels, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
   York.

Music in the Tuileries

   Music in the Tuileries, 1862
   Music in the Tuileries, 1862

   Music in the Tuileries is an early example of Manet's painterly style,
   inspired by Hals and Velázquez, and it is a harbinger of his life-long
   interest in the subject of leisure.

   While the picture was not regarded as finished by some, the suggested
   atmosphere imparts a sense of what the Tuileries gardens were like at
   the time; one may imagine the music and conversation.

   Here Manet has depicted his friends, artists, authors, and musicians
   who take part, and he has included a self-portrait among the subjects.

Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe)

   The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe), 1863
   The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe), 1863

   A major early work is The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur
   l'herbe). The Paris Salon rejected it for exhibition in 1863, but he
   exhibited it at the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the rejected) later in
   the year. Emperor Napoleon III had initiated The Salon des Refusés,
   after the Paris Salon rejected more than 4,000 paintings in 1863.

   The painting's juxtaposition of fully-dressed men and a nude woman was
   controversial, as was its abbreviated, sketch-like handling—an
   innovation that distinguished Manet from Courbet. At the same time,
   Manet's composition reveals his study of the old masters, as the
   disposition of the main figures is derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's
   engraving Urteil des Paris (c. 1515) after his copy from a drawing by
   Raphael.

   Scholars also cite as an important precedent for Manet's painting Le
   déjeuner sur l'herbe, The Tempest which is a famous Renaissance
   painting by Italian master Giorgione (around 1508). It is housed in the
   Gallerie dell'Accademia of Venice, Italy. The mysterious and enigmatic
   painting also features a fully dressed man and a nude female in a rural
   setting. The man is standing to the left and gazing to the side,
   apparently at the woman; a partially nude woman, who is sitting in a
   landscape, and is breastfeeding a baby. While darkening clouds and
   distant lightening herald an approaching storm. The relationship
   between the two figures is unclear.

Olympia

   Olympia, 1863
   Olympia, 1863

   As he had in Luncheon on the Grass, Manet again paraphrased a respected
   work by a Renaissance artist in the painting Olympia ( 1863), a nude
   portrayed in a style reminiscent of early studio photographs, but whose
   pose was based on Titian's Venus of Urbino ( 1538).

   The painting was controversial partly because the nude is wearing some
   small items of clothing such as an orchid in her hair, a bracelet, a
   ribbon around her neck, and mule slippers, all of which accentuated her
   nakedness. This modern Venus' body is thin, counter to prevailing
   standards; thin women were not considered attractive at the time, and
   the painting's lack of idealism rankled. A fully-dressed servant is
   featured, exploiting the same juxtaposition as in Luncheon on the
   Grass.

   Manet's Olympia also was considered shocking because of the manner in
   which the subject acknowledges the viewer. She defiantly looks out as
   her servant offers flowers from one of her male suitors. Although her
   hand rests on her leg, hiding her pubic area, the reference to
   traditional female virtue is ironic; a notion of modesty is notoriously
   absent in this work. The alert black cat at the foot of the bed strikes
   a rebellious note in contrast to that of the sleeping dog in Titian's
   portrayal of the goddess in his Venus of Urbino. Manet's uniquely frank
   (and largely unpopular) depiction of a self-assured prostitute was
   rejected by the Paris Salon of 1863. At the same time, his notoriety
   translated to popularity in the French avant-garde community.

   As with Luncheon on the Grass, the painting raised the issue of
   prostitution within contemporary France and the roles of women within
   society.

Life and times

   Berthe Morisot, 1872
   Berthe Morisot, 1872

   The roughly painted style and photographic lighting in these works was
   seen as specifically modern, and as a challenge to the Renaissance
   works Manet copied or used as source material. His work is considered
   'early modern', partially because of the black outlining of figures,
   which draws attention to the surface of the picture plane and the
   material quality of paint.

   He became friends with the Impressionists Edgar Degas, Claude Monet,
   Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, and Camille
   Pissarro, through another painter, Berthe Morisot, who was a member of
   the group and drew him into their activities. The grand niece of the
   painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Morisot's paintings first had been
   accepted in the Salon de Paris in 1864 and she continued to show in the
   salon for ten years.

   Manet became the friend and colleague of Berthe Morisot in 1868. She is
   credited with convincing Manet to attempt plein air painting, which she
   had been practicing since she had been introduced to it by another
   friend of hers, Camille Corot. They had a reciprocating relationship
   and Manet incorporated some of her techniques into his paintings. In
   1874, she become his sister-in-law when she married his brother,
   Eugene.
   Self-portrait with palette, 1879.
   Self-portrait with palette, 1879.

   Unlike the core Impressionist group, Manet maintained that modern
   artists should seek to exhibit at the Paris Salon rather than abandon
   it in favour of independent exhibitions. Nevertheless, when Manet was
   excluded from the International exhibition of 1867, he set up his own
   exhibition. His mother worried that he would waste all his inheritance
   on this project, which was enormously expensive. While the exhibition
   earned poor reviews from the major critics, it also provided his first
   contacts with several future Impressionist painters, including Degas.

   Although his own work influenced and anticipated the Impressionist
   style, he resisted involvement in Impressionist exhibitions, partly
   because he did not wish to be seen as the representative of a group
   identity, and partly because he preferred to exhibit at the Salon. Eva
   Gonzalès was his only formal student.

   He was influenced by the Impressionists, especially Monet and Morisot.
   Their influence is seen in Manet's use of lighter colors, but he
   retained his distinctive use of black, uncharacteristic of
   Impressionist painting. He painted many outdoor ( plein air) pieces,
   but always returned to what he considered the serious work of the
   studio.

   Throughout his life, although resisted by art critics, Manet could
   number as his champions Émile Zola, who supported him publicly in the
   press, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Charles Baudelaire, who challenged him to
   depict life as it was. Manet, in turn, drew or painted each of them.

Cafe scenes

   The Cafe Concert, 1878
   The Cafe Concert, 1878

   Manet's paintings of cafe scenes are observations of social life in
   nineteenth century Paris. People are depicted drinking beer, listening
   to music, flirting, reading, or waiting. Many of these paintings were
   based on sketches executed on the spot. He often visited the Brasserie
   Reichshoffen on boulevard de Rochechourt, upon which he based At the
   Cafe in 1878. Several people are at the bar, and one woman confronts
   the viewer while others wait to be served. Such depictions represent
   the painted journal of a flâneur. These are painted in a style which is
   loose, referencing Hals and Velázquez, yet they capture the mood and
   feeling of Parisian night life. They are painted snapshots of
   bohemianism, urban working people, as well as some of the bourgeoisie.

   In Corner of a Cafe Concert, a man smokes while behind him a waitress
   serves drinks. In The Beer Drinkers a woman enjoys her beer in the
   company of a friend. In The Cafe Concert, shown at right, a
   sophisticated gentleman sits at a bar while a waitress stands
   resolutely in the background, sipping her drink. In The Waitress, a
   serving woman pauses for a moment behind a seated customer smoking a
   pipe, while a ballet dancer, with arms extended as she is about to
   turn, is on stage in the background.

   Manet also sat at the restaurant on the Avenue de Clichy called Pere
   Lathuille's, which had a garden as well as the dining area. One of the
   paintings he produced here was, At Pere Lathuille's, in which a man
   displays an unrequited interest in a woman dining near him.

   In Le Bon Bock, a large, cheerful, bearded man sits with a pipe in one
   hand and a glass of beer in the other, looking straight at the viewer.

Paintings of social activities

   Racing at Longchamp, 1864.
   Racing at Longchamp, 1864.

   Manet also painted the upper class enjoying more formal social
   activities. In Masked ball at the Opera, Manet shows a lively crowd of
   people enjoying a party. Men stand with top hats and long black suits
   while talking to women with masks and costumes. He included portraits
   of his friends in this picture.

   Manet depicted other popular activities in his work. In Racing at
   Longchamp, an unusual perspective is employed to underscore the furious
   energy of racehorses as they rush toward the viewer. In Skating Manet
   shows a well dressed woman in the foreground, while others skate behind
   her. Always there is the sense of active urban life continuing behind
   the subject, extending outside the frame of the canvas.

   In View of the International Exhibition, soldiers relax, seated and
   standing, prosperous couples are talking. There is a gardener, a boy
   with a dog, a woman on horseback—in short, a sample of the classes and
   ages of the people of Paris.

Politics

   The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, 1867.
   The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, 1867.

   The Prints and Drawings Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts
   (Budapest) has a watercolour/ gouache (The Barricade) by Manet
   depicting a summary execution of Communards by Versailles troops based
   on a lithograph of the Execution of Maximilian. The Execution was one
   of Manet's largest paintings, and judging by the full-scale preparatory
   study, one which the painter regarded as most important. Its subject is
   the execution by Mexican firing squad of a Hapsburg emperor, who had
   been installed by Napoleon III. As an indictment of formalized
   slaughter it looks back to Goya, and anticipates Picasso's Guernica.

   In January 1871 Manet traveled to Oloron-Sainte-Marie in the Pyrenees.
   In his absence his friends added his name to the "Féderation des
   artistes" (see: Courbet) of the Paris Commune. Manet stayed away from
   Paris, perhaps, until after the Semaine sanglante. In a letter to
   Berthe Morisot at Cherbourg (June 10,1871) he writes :" We came back to
   Paris a few days ago...".(the semaine sanglante ended on 28 May).

   On 18 March 1871 he wrote to his (confederate) friend Félix Braquemond
   in Paris about his visit to Bordeaux, the provisory seat of the French
   National Assembly of the Third French Republic where Emile Zola
   introduced him to the sites: " I never imagined that France could be
   represented by such doddering old fools, not excepting that little twit
   Thiers..." (some colorful language unsuitable at social events
   followed, see "Manet by himself" 1991/2004). If this could be
   interpreted as support of the Commune a following letter to Braquemond
   ( March 21, 1871) expressed his idea more clearly: "Only party hacks
   and the ambitious, the Henrys of this world following on the heels of
   the Milliéres, the grotesque imitators of the Commune of 1793..." He
   knew the communard Lucien Henry to have been a former painters model
   and Millière, an insurance agent. "What an encouragement all these
   bloodthirsty caperings are for the arts! But there is at least one
   consolation in our misfortunes: that we're not politicians and have no
   desire to be elected as deputies". (the letters are published in
   Julliet Wilson-Bareau ed "Manet by himself" UK: Times Warner, 2004)

Paris

   Manet depicted many scenes of the streets of Paris in his works. The
   Rue Mosnier Decked with Flags depicts red, white, and blue pennants
   covering buildings on either side of the street--another painting of
   the same title features a one-legged man walking with crutches. Again
   depicting the same street, but this time in a different context, is Rue
   Monsnier with Pavers, in which men repair the roadway while people and
   horses move past.
   The Railway, 1872
   The Railway, 1872

   The Railway, widely known as The Gare Saint-Lazare, was painted in
   1873. The setting is the urban landscape of Paris in the late
   nineteenth century. Using his favorite model in his last painting of
   her, a fellow painter, Victorine Meurent, also the model for Olympia
   and the Luncheon on the Grass, sits before an iron fence holding a
   sleeping puppy and an open book in her lap, next to her is a little
   girl with her back to the painter, who watches a train pass beneath
   them.

   Instead of choosing the traditional natural view as background for an
   outdoor scene, Manet opts for the iron grating which “boldly stretches
   across the canvas” (Gay 106). The only evidence of the train is its
   white cloud of steam. In the distance, modern apartment buildings are
   seen. This arrangement compresses the foreground into a narrow focus.
   The traditional convention of deep space is ignored.

   When the painting was first exhibited at the official Paris Salon of
   1874:

   "Visitors and critics found its subject baffling, its composition
   incoherent, and its execution sketchy. Caricaturists ridiculed Manet’s
   picture, in which only a few recognized the symbol of modernity that it
   has become today”(Dervaux 1).

   The painting is currently displayed at the National Gallery of Art in
   Washington, D.C..

Late works

   A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère), 1882
   A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère), 1882

   He completed painting his last major work, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
   (Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère), in 1882 and it hung in the Salon that
   year.

   In 1875, a French edition of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven included
   lithographs by Manet and translation by Mallarmé.

   In 1881, with pressure from his friend Antonin Proust, the French
   government awarded Manet the Légion d'honneur.

Private life

   In 1863 Manet married Suzanne Leenhoff, a Dutch-born piano teacher of
   his own age with whom he had been romantically involved for
   approximately ten years. Leenhoff initially had been employed by
   Manet's father, Auguste, to teach Manet and his younger brother piano.
   She also may have been Auguste's mistress. In 1852, Leenhoff gave
   birth, out of wedlock, to a son, Leon Koella Leenhoff.

   After the death of his father in 1862, Manet married Suzanne.
   Eleven-year-old Leon Leenhoff, whose father may have been either of the
   Manets, posed often for Manet. Most famously, he is the subject of the
   Boy with a Sword in 1861.

Death

   Manet's Tomb at Passy Cemetery
   Manet's Tomb at Passy Cemetery

   Manet died of untreated syphilis, which he contracted in his forties.
   The disease caused him considerable pain and partial paralysis from
   locomotor ataxia in the years prior to his death.

   His left foot was amputated because of gangrene, an operation followed
   eleven days later by his death. He died at the age of fifty-one in
   Paris in 1883, and is buried in the Cimetière de Passy in the city.

   In 2000, one of his paintings sold for over $20 million.

Paintings

   Flowers in a Crystal Vase

                            Femme au Chapeau a plume grise

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