Born into an upper-class household with strong political connections, Manet rejected the naval career originally envisioned for him; he became engrossed in the world of painting. His early masterworks,The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) orOlympia, "premiering" in 1863 and '65, respectively, caused great controversy with both critics and the Academy of Fine Arts, but soon were praised by progressive artists as the breakthrough acts to the new style, Impressionism. These works, along with others, are considered watershed paintings that mark the start ofmodern art. The last 20 years of Manet's life saw him form bonds with other great artists of the time; he developed his own simple and direct style that would be heralded as innovative and serve as a major influence for future painters.
Édouard Manet was born in Paris on 23 January 1832, in the ancestralhôtel particulier (mansion) on the Rue des Petits Augustins (nowRue Bonaparte) to an affluent and well-connected family.[3] He had two younger brothers,Eugène (born 1833) and Gustave (born 1835). His mother, Eugénie-Desirée Fournier, was the daughter of a diplomat and goddaughter of the Swedish crown princeCharles Bernadotte, from whom the Swedish monarchs are descended. His father, Auguste Manet, was a French judge who expected Édouard to pursue a career in law.[4] His uncle, Edmond Fournier, encouraged him to pursue painting and took young Manet to theLouvre.[5] In 1844, he enrolled at secondary school, theCollège Rollin, where he boarded until 1848.[4] He showed little academic talent and was generally unhappy at the school.[6] In 1845, at the advice of his uncle, Manet enrolled in a special course of drawing where he metAntonin Proust, future Minister of Fine Arts and his lifelong friend.[7]
At his father's suggestion, in 1848 he sailed on a training vessel toRio de Janeiro. After he twice failed the examination to join theNavy,[8] his father relented to his wishes to pursue an art education. From 1850 to 1856, Manet studied under the academic painterThomas Couture.[4] Couture encouraged his students to paint contemporary life, though he would eventually be horrified by Manet's choice of lower-class and "degenerate" subjects such asThe Absinthe Drinker.[9] In his spare time, Manet copiedOld Masters such asDiego Velázquez andTitian in the Louvre.[4]
From 1853 to 1856, Manet made brief visits to Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, during which time he was influenced by the Dutch painterFrans Hals[10] and the Spanish artists Velázquez andFrancisco José de Goya.[11]
In 1856, Manet opened a 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 ofrealism initiated byGustave Courbet, he paintedThe Absinthe Drinker (1858–59) and other contemporary subjects such as beggars, singers, Romani, people in cafés, and bullfights. After his early career, he rarely painted religious, mythological, or historical subjects; religious paintings from 1864 include hisJesus Mocked by the Soldiers[12] andThe Dead Christ with Angels.[13]
Manet had two canvases accepted at theSalon in 1861. A portrait of his mother and father (Portrait of Monsieur and Madame Manet), the latter of whom at the time was paralysed by a stroke or advanced syphilis, was ill-received by critics.[14] The other,The Spanish Singer, was admired byThéophile Gautier, and placed in a more conspicuous location as a result of its popularity with Salon-goers.[15] Manet's work, which appeared "slightly slapdash" when compared with the meticulous style of so many other Salon paintings, intrigued some young artists and brought new business to his studio.[15] According to one contemporary source,The Spanish Singer, painted in a "strange new fashion[,] caused many painters' eyes to open and their jaws to drop."[a]
In 1862, Manet exhibitedMusic in the Tuileries (probably painted in 1860),[5][17] one of his first masterpieces. With its portrayal of a crowd of subjects at theJardin des Tuileries, the painting shows the outdoor leisure of contemporary Paris, which would be a lifelong subject of Manet's.[18] Among the figures in the gardens are the poetCharles Baudelaire, the musicianJacques Offenbach, and others of Manet's family and friends, including a self-portrait of the artist.[17]
Music in the Tuileries received substantial critical and public attention, most of it negative.[5] In the words of one Manet biographer, "it is difficult for us to imagine the kind of furyMusic in the Tuileries provoked when it was exhibited".[19] By portraying Manet's social circle instead of classical heroes, historical icons, or gods, the painting could be interpreted as challenging the value of those subjects or as an attempt to elevate his contemporaries to the same level.[20] The public, accustomed to the finely detailed brushwork of historical painters such asErnest Meissonier, thought Manet's thick brushstrokes looked crude and unfinished. Angered by the subject matter and technique, several visitors even threatened to destroy the painting.[5][21] One of Manet's idols,Eugène Delacroix, was one of the painting's few defenders.[5] Despite the largely negative reaction, the controversy made Manet a well-known name in Paris.[21]
Another major early work isThe Luncheon on the Grass (Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe), originallyLe Bain. TheParis Salon rejected it for exhibition in 1863, but Manet agreed to exhibit it at theSalon des Refusés (Salon of the Rejected).[21] This parallel salon was initiated by EmperorNapoleon III as a solution to the public outcry after the official salon's Selection Committee only accepted 2,217 paintings out of more than 5,000 submissions. It gave rejected artists the opportunity to display their paintings if they chose.[5]
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. One critic stated that the brushwork appeared to have been done with a "floor mop".[5] However, others such as his friend Antonin Proust celebrated the painting, and novelistÉmile Zola was so affected by the experience of viewing it that he later based the title painting in his novelL'Œuvre ("The Work of Art") onLe Déjeuner sur l'herbe.[22]
Le Déjeuner andJames McNeill Whistler'sSymphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl were the two most discussed works of the Salon des Refusés, which itself would become one of the most famous art exhibitions of all time.[22] Following the Salon, Manet became yet more notorious and widely discussed.[24] However,Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and Manet's other paintings still failed to sell, and Manet continued living off of his inheritance from his recently deceased father.[5]
As he had inLuncheon on the Grass, Manet again paraphrased a respected work by a Renaissance artist in the paintingOlympia (1863), a nude portrayed in a style reminiscent of early studio photographs, but whose pose was based onTitian'sVenus of Urbino (1538). The painting is also reminiscent ofFrancisco Goya's paintingThe Nude Maja (1800).
Manet embarked on the canvas after being challenged to give the Salon a nude painting to display. His uniquely frank depiction of a self-assuredprostitute was accepted by the Paris Salon in 1865, where it created a scandal. According toAntonin Proust, "only the precautions taken by the administration prevented the painting being punctured and torn" by offended viewers.[25] The painting was controversial partly because the nude is wearing some small items of clothing such as anorchid in her hair, a bracelet, a ribbon around her neck, and mule slippers, all of which accentuated her nakedness, sexuality, and comfortablecourtesan lifestyle. The orchid, upswept hair,black cat, and bouquet of flowers were all recognized symbols of sexuality at the time. This modern Venus' body is thin, counter to prevailing standards; the painting's lack of idealism rankled viewers. The painting's flatness, inspired byJapanese wood block art, serves to make the nude more human and less voluptuous. A fully dressed black servant is featured, exploiting the then-current theory that black people were hyper-sexed.[5] That she is wearing the clothing of a servant to a courtesan here furthers the sexual tension of the piece.
Olympia's body as well as her gaze is unabashedly confrontational. 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. A contemporary critic denounced Olympia's "shamelessly flexed" left hand, which seemed to him a mockery of the relaxed, shielding hand of Titian's Venus.[26] Likewise, the alert black cat at the foot of the bed strikes a sexually rebellious note in contrast to that of the sleeping dog in Titian's portrayal of the goddess in hisVenus of Urbino.
Olympia was the subject of caricatures in the popular press, but was championed by the French avant-garde community, and the painting's significance was appreciated by artists such asGustave Courbet,Paul Cézanne,Claude Monet, and laterPaul Gauguin.
As withLuncheon on the Grass, the painting raised the issue of prostitution within contemporary France and the roles of women within society.[5]
After the death of his father in 1862, Manet marriedSuzanne Leenhoff in 1863 at aProtestant church.[27] Leenhoff was a Dutch-born piano teacher two years Manet's senior 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.
Manet painted his wife inThe Reading, among other paintings. Her son, Leon Leenhoff, whose father may have been either of the Manets, posed often for Manet. Most famously, he is the subject of theBoy Carrying a Sword of 1861 (Metropolitan Museum of Art,New York). He also appears as the boy carrying a tray in the background ofThe Balcony (1868–69).[28]
The supposed grand-niece of the painterJean-Honoré Fragonard, Morisot had her first painting accepted in theSalon de Paris in 1864, and she continued to show in the salon for the next ten years.
Manet became the friend and colleague of Morisot in 1868. She is credited with convincing Manet to attemptplein air painting, which she had been practicing since she was 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 became his sister-in-law when she married his brother,Eugène. It has been speculated that there was a repressed love between Manet and Morisot, exemplified by the numerous portraits he did of her before she married his brother.[29][30]
Unlike the core Impressionist group, Manet maintained that modern artists should seek to exhibit at theParis Salon rather than abandon it in favor 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, Manet 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, a daughter of the novelistEmmanuel 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: after the early 1870s he made less use of dark backgrounds but 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.
Manet enjoyed a close friendship with composerEmmanuel Chabrier, painting two portraits of him; the musician owned 14 of Manet's paintings and dedicated hisImpromptu to Manet's wife.[31]
One of Manet's frequent models at the beginning of the 1880s was the "semimondaine"Méry Laurent, who posed for seven portraits in pastel.[32] Laurent's salons hosted many French (and even American) writers and painters of her time; Manet had connections and influence through such events.
Throughout his life, although resisted by art critics, Manet could number as his championsÉmile Zola, who supported him publicly in the press,Stéphane Mallarmé, andCharles Baudelaire, who challenged him to depict life as it was. Manet, in turn, drew or painted each of them.
The Café-Concert, 1878. Scene set in the Cabaret de Reichshoffen on the Boulevard Rochechouart, where women on the fringes of society freely intermingled with well-heeled gentlemen.[33] The Walters Art Museum.
Manet's paintings of café scenes are observations of social life in 19th-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. Manet often visited the Brasserie Reichshoffen on boulevard de Rochechourt, upon which he basedAt 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 aflâneur. These are painted in a style which is loose, referencingHals andVelázquez, yet they capture the mood and feeling of Parisian night life. They are painted snapshots ofbohemianism, urbanworking people, as well as some of thebourgeoisie.
InCorner of a Café-Concert, a man smokes while behind him a waitress serves drinks. InThe Beer Drinkers a woman enjoys her beer in the company of a friend. InThe Café-Concert, shown at right, a sophisticated gentleman sits at a bar while a waitress stands resolutely in the background, sipping her drink. InThe 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 in addition to the dining area. One of the paintings he produced here wasChez le père Lathuille (At Pere Lathuille's), in which a man displays an unrequited interest in a woman dining near him.
InLe Bon Bock (1873), 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.
Manet painted the upper class enjoying more formal social activities. InMasked 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.
His 1868 paintingThe Luncheon was posed in the dining room of the Manet house.
Manet depicted other popular activities in his work. InThe Races at Longchamp, an unusual perspective is employed to underscore the furious energy of racehorses as they rush toward the viewer. InSkating, 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.
InView 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.
Manet's response to modern life included works devoted to war, in subjects that may be seen as updated interpretations of the genre of "history painting".[34] The first such work wasThe Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama (1864), a sea skirmish known as theBattle of Cherbourg from theAmerican Civil War which took place off the French coast, and may have been witnessed by the artist.[35]
Of interest next was the French intervention in Mexico; from 1867 to 1869 Manet painted three versions of theExecution of Emperor Maximilian, an event which raised concerns regarding French foreign and domestic policy.[36] The several versions of theExecution are among Manet's largest paintings, which suggests that the theme was one which the painter regarded as most important. Its subject is the execution by Mexican firing squad of a Habsburg emperor who had been installed byNapoleon III. Neither the paintings nor alithograph of the subject were permitted to be shown in France.[37] As an indictment of formalized slaughter,the paintings look back toGoya,[38] and anticipatePicasso'sGuernica.
Boy blowing bubbles (1867), Manet paints about the fleetingness of life, a theme traditionally represented by soap bubbles in painting
During theFranco-Prussian War, Manet served in the National Guard to help defend the city during thesiege of Paris, along with Degas.[39] In January 1871, he traveled toOloron-Sainte-Marie in thePyrenees. In his absence his friends added his name to the "Fédération des artistes" (see:Courbet) of theParis Commune. Manet stayed away from Paris, perhaps, until after thesemaine sanglante: in a letter toBerthe Morisot atCherbourg (10 June 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) friendFélix Bracquemond in Paris about his visit toBordeaux, the provisional seat of the French National Assembly of theThird French Republic whereÉmile Zola introduced him to the sites: "I never imagined that France could be represented by such doddering old fools, not excepting that little twitThiers..."[40] If this could be interpreted as support of the Commune, a following letter to Bracquemond (21 March 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 painter's 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 public figure Manet admired most was the republicanLéon Gambetta.[41] In the heat of theseize mai coup in 1877, Manet opened up his atelier to a republican electoral meeting chaired by Gambetta's friendEugène Spuller.[41]
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, isRue Mosnier with Pavers, in which men repair the roadway while people and horses move past.
The Railway, widely known asThe Gare Saint-Lazare, was painted in 1873. The setting is the urbanlandscape of Paris in the late 19th century. Using his favorite model in his last painting of her, a fellow painter,Victorine Meurent, also the model forOlympia and theLuncheon 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, watching 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".[42] 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.
Historian Isabelle Dervaux has described the reception this painting received when it 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".[43] The painting is currently in theNational Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[44]
Manet painted several boating subjects in 1874.Boating, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exemplifies in its conciseness the lessons Manet learned from Japanese prints, and the abrupt cropping by the frame of the boat and sail adds to the immediacy of the image.[45]
In 1875, a book-length French edition ofEdgar Allan Poe'sThe Raven included lithographs by Manet and translation by Mallarmé.[46]
In his mid-forties Manet's health deteriorated, and he developed severe pain andpartial paralysis in his legs. In 1879 he began receivinghydrotherapy treatments at a spa nearMeudon intended to improve what he believed was acirculatory problem, but in reality he was suffering fromlocomotor ataxia, a known side-effect ofsyphilis.[48][49] In 1880, he painted a portrait there of the opera singerÉmilie Ambre asCarmen. Ambre and her lover Gaston de Beauplan had an estate in Meudon and had organized the first exhibition of Manet'sThe Execution of Emperor Maximilian in New York in December 1879.[50]
In his last years Manet painted many small-scalestill lifes of fruits and vegetables, such asABunch of Asparagus andThe Lemon (both 1880).[51] He completed his last major work,A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère), in 1882, and it hung in the Salon that year. Afterwards, he limited himself to small formats.
Manet's last paintings were of flowers in glass vases.[52] There are 20 such paintings known, with the last one painted in March 1883, barely two months before his death.[53] Quoted in Venice thirteen years later, Manet is credited with stating that an artist can say everything he has to say with "flowers, fruit, and clouds." His last flower paintings are a demonstration of that belief.[53]
In April 1883, his left foot was amputated because ofgangrene caused by complications from syphilis andrheumatism. He died eleven days later on 30 April in Paris. He is buried in thePassy Cemetery in the city.[55]
Manet's public career lasted from 1861, the year of his first participation in the Salon, until his death in 1883. His known extant works, as catalogued in 1975 by Denis Rouart and Daniel Wildenstein, comprise 430 oil paintings, 89 pastels, and more than 400 works on paper.[56]
The grave of Manet at Passy
Although harshly condemned by critics who decried its lack of conventional finish, Manet's work had 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."[57]
The roughly painted style and photographic lighting in Manet's paintings was seen as specifically modern, and as a challenge to the Renaissance works he copied or used as source material. He rejected the technique he had learned in the studio ofThomas Couture – in which a painting was constructed using successive layers of paint on a dark-toned ground – in favor of a direct,alla prima method using opaque paint on a light ground. Novel at the time, this method made possible the completion of a painting in a single sitting. It was adopted by the Impressionists, and became the prevalent method of painting in oils for generations that followed.[58] Manet's work is considered "early modern", partially because of the opaque flatness of his surfaces, the frequent sketch-like passages, and the black outlining of figures, all of which draw attention to the surface of the picture plane and the material quality of paint.
The art historian Beatrice Farwell says Manet "has been universally regarded as the Father ofModernism. With Courbet he was among the first to take serious risks with the public whose favour he sought, the first to makealla prima painting the standard technique for oil painting and one of the first to take liberties with Renaissance perspective and to offer 'pure painting' as a source of aesthetic pleasure. He was a pioneer, again with Courbet, in the rejection of humanistic and historical subject-matter, and shared with Degas the establishment of modern urban life as acceptable material for high art."[58]
The late Manet painting,Le Printemps (1881), sold to theJ. Paul Getty Museum for $65.1 million, setting a new auction record for Manet, exceeding its pre-sale estimate of $25–35 million at Christie's on 5 November 2014.[59] The previous auction record was held bySelf-Portrait With Palette which sold for $33.2 million at Sotheby's on 22 June 2010.[60]
^"Berthe Morisot par Edouard Manet, le désir en peinture".Le Monde. 18 October 2023. Archived fromthe original on 18 October 2023. Retrieved18 October 2023.Tous les portraits de Berthe Morisot par Manet sont magnifiques, pleins de son amour pour celle qui avait épousé son frère Eugène. Ils disent un désir qui n'a pu s'exprimer et c'est autour de cette part manquante que j'ai imaginé mon exposition
^Delage, R.Emmanuel Chabrier. Paris: Fayard, 1999. Chapter XI examines in detail their relationship and the effects of each other on their work.
^abNord, Philip G. (1995).The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth Century France. Harvard University Press. pp. 170–171.
^Gay, Peter.Art and Act: On Causes in History--Manet, Gropius, Mondrian. United Kingdom, Harper & Row, 1976. p. 106.
^Adams, Katherine H.; Keene, Michael L. (2010).After the Vote Was Won: The Later Achievements of Fifteen Suffragists. McFarland. p. 37.ISBN978-0786449385.
Smee, Sebastian (2016).The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art. Random House.ISBN9780812985078. One of the friendships is that of Manet andEdgar Degas, pp. 91–176.
Brombert, Beth Archer (1996).Édouard Manet: Rebel in a Frock Coat. Little, Brown.ISBN0316109479. andBrombert, Beth Archer (1997).Édouard Manet: Rebel in a Frock Coat (paperback ed.). University of Chicago Press.ISBN0226075443.
Greenwald, Diana Seave, ed. (2024).Manet: A Model Family. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.ISBN9780691260655
Hamilton, George (1954).Manet and His Critics. Yale University Press.
King, Ross (2006).The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism. New York: Waller & Company.ISBN0802714668.
Krell, Alan (1996).Manet and the Painters of Contemporary Life. Thames and Hudson. p. 83.
Mauner, G. L.; Loyrette, H. (2000).Manet: The Still-Life Paintings. New York: H.N. Abrams in association with the American Federation of Arts. p. 66.ISBN0810943913.
Meyers, Jeffrey (2005).Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt. Harcourt.ISBN9780151010769.
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