Édouard Manet (Paris, January 23, 1832 - Paris, April 30, 1883) was a French painter and graphic artist and one of the most important figures in 19th century art, considered by scholars of fine arts as one of the most important representatives of French impressionism, although many of his works have strong characteristics of realism.
He prefers the play of light and shadow, restoring to the nude its rawness and truth, very different from the sugary nudes of the time. Textures are only suggested, shapes are simplified. The themes are no longer impersonal or allegorical, but reflect the life of the time, and, in certain paintings, follow the naturalist aesthetic of Zola and Maupassant.
Manet was criticized not only for his themes, but also for his technique, which eschewed academic conventions. Often inspired by the classical masters and in particular by the Spanish of the Golden Age, Manet nevertheless influenced certain precursors of Impressionism by virtue of the purity of his approach.
To this his liberation from traditional literary, comic or moralistic associations with painting owes the fact that he is considered one of the founders of modern art. His main works were: Lunch on the Grass or Lunch in the Field, Olympia, The Balcony, The Fife Player and The Execution of Maximilian.
The Spring, Manet's 1881 masterpiece, sold in November 2014 for $65.13 million at an auction in New York, a record price for a work by the Impressionist.
Édouard Manet's Early years
Manet was born in Paris on January 23, 1832. His father, Auguste, was a high official in the Ministry of Justice and descended from an illustrious bourgeois family in the French capital. Mrs Manet (whose maiden name was Fournier) was the daughter of a French diplomat in Sweden. Manet had two younger brothers:
Eugène and Gustave. Despite an austere upbringing, Manet was able to discover the artistic world thanks to an uncle, Captain Édouard Fournier, who would take Édouard and his brother Eugène to the galleries of the Louvre Museum to admire the great masters.
At the age of 12, Édouard was sent to Collège Rollin (now Lycée Jacques Decour), near Montmartre. At school, Édouard was disappointing: he was not very diligent and somewhat insolent.
Édouard's poor results at school made his family rethink the ambitions nurtured in their first-born son; the family wanted Manet to study law. Aware that Édouard had no vocation for a career in law, his parents did not oppose his desire to become a sailor.
The first failure in trying to enter the Naval School meant that Édouard only entered the career in a less noble way: through work. In December 1848, Édouard would embark the school ship "Havre et Guadeloupe" for Brazil as a simple sailor. If this experience did not confirm that Édouard had no vocation for the navy, it brought him a great experience.
It was in Brazil that he developed a certain taste for the exotic, for women, and developed a repulsion for slavery. The luminosity of the Guanabara Bay marked him very much, and this would leave marked traces in his way of painting. Back in France in June 1849, Manet again failed in his attempt to enter the Naval School.
Édouard Manet Art studies
After his repeated failures to enter the Naval School, Manet received support from his parents to study at the studio of the painter and master Thomas Couture, where he stayed for six years. Thomas Couture had an academic style, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris ("School of Fine Arts"), his best known works were The Romans and The Decadence.
For six years, Manet sought to learn the technical basics of painting and made copies of works exhibited in the Louvre (copies of works by Titian, Velazquez, Tintoretto, and Delacroix). Manet completed his learning by traveling and visiting museums in other European countries (Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and others).
In one of the trips to Italy, Manet copied Venus of Urbino by Titian, which would be his inspiration to make Olympia years later.
In 1852, Manet had an illegitimate child with Suzanne Leenhoff. Suzanne was of Dutch origin and a piano teacher. Manet's father opposed the marriage of the two, which only took place after Mr. Manet died.
In the year 1856, Manet left Couture's atelier due to artistic disagreements. According to Couture, Manet had no intermediate tones between light and shade. For Manet, these intermediate tones weakened the shadow and light, so he ended up using almost pure colors.
Hispanic period
In 1859, Manet sent his first work to the Paris Salon ("The Absinthe Drinker"), a realistic work influenced by the works of painter Gustave Courbet and also by Diego Velázquez's Menippe. The work was rejected by the Salon. The jury was not yet open to new ideas. The image of the drinker would appear in another Manet painting, "The Old Musician" from 1862.
After leaving Couture's studio, Manet had a certain fascination with the art of the Iberian Peninsula. Among his works of the period are "Lola de Valencia" (which depicts a dancer in traditional Spanish costume), "The Spanish Singer," "Young Man in Majo costume," "Spanish Ballet," and "Mile V. in sword costume" (whose model was Victorine Meurent dressed as a bullfighter).
The latter two exhibited at the 1863 Salon of the Refused. His Hispanic period was influenced by the works of Diego Velázquez.
Victorine Meurent would play an important role in Manet's work, he met her during his studies with Couture and from this point on she would become a frequent model in his works.
The painting "The Spanish Singer" was his first painting exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1861 along with the work "Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Auguste Manet" (a portrait of his parents). The "Spanish Singer" gained prominence in the exhibition for its vivid colors and won honorable mention, while "Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Auguste Manet" was a work typical of the times of Couture's atelier, a more classical work.
The last work under Spanish influence was "The Dead Man" from 1864. When Manet painted it, it was much larger and was called "Incident at the Bullfight", but it ended up receiving criticism due to the cruelty of the scene and Manet then split the painting and most of it was renamed "The Dead Man".
Édouard Manet's Glory and scandals
Manet was a friendly and sociable young man. When he began to make a name for himself he was readily accepted in circles of Parisian intellectuals and aristocrats. He frequented the Tuileries Gardens (Jardin des Tuileries in French) with the constant presence of his friend, Baudelaire, a place that served as inspiration for his 1862 work Music in the Tuileries.
The work Music in the Tuileries marks his break with realism in his first impressionist work. There are people very close to Manet portrayed in this work, among them Baudelaire and Eugène Manet, his brother. Baudelaire and Manet had known each other since 1858, but they became great friends later.
Starting in 1863 the Salon of the Refused appeared, where paintings that did not enter the official salon could be exhibited there. Manet exhibited three paintings in this salon in 1863: "Victorine Mereunt in Bullfighter's Costume", "Boy in Spanish Costume", and "Lunch on the Grass".
The painting "Lunch on the Grass" was a scandal for the time for the nudity that some found vulgar, it featured two clothed men and a naked woman. Suzanne Leenhoff (his wife) and Victorine Meurent (his favorite model) posed for the nude woman composition, with Suzanne's body and Victorine's face.
"Olympia," painted in 1863 but not shown to the public until 1865, caused stronger counter reactions than "Lunch on the Grass." It was a portrait of a naked young prostitute and there was a bold reference to Titian's work (Venus of Urbino).
The model again was Victorine Meurent portrayed naked and at her feet a black cat instead of a dog as in Titian's painting. In an erotic atmosphere there was also a lack of perspective (technique where one sees the right size of objects in relation to distance).
In this same year Manet's father would die and he would end up marrying Suzanne Leenhoff shortly after his death. Suzanne was portrayed in many of Manet's paintings including "The Surprise Nymph" (from 1861), "The Reading" (from 1865) and "Suzanne Manet at her Piano" (from 1867).
Manet had had a son with Suzanne, Léon Leenhoff, but never acknowledged his paternity. Léon would also pose for several paintings between his childhood and adolescence, including "The Bubbles" (1867) and "Lunch at the Studio" (1868). The latter was shown at the Paris Salon exhibition of 1869.
In 1867, "The Fife Player" was rejected at the Paris Salon. This caused Emile Zola to write an article in L'Événement defending the canvas (Zola would be portrayed by Manet in 1868, a painting that was accepted in the Salon of the same year).
The following year, 1867, after being excluded from the International Salon, he promoted with his own money an exhibition of his works, but, without public success, the exhibition was a failure.
In the same year he painted The Execution of Maximilian (L'Exécution de Maximilien), a work of indignation over the death of Maximilian of Habsburg abandoned by Napoleon III in Mexico. Manet worked for over a year to produce a large historical and commemorative canvas. The result is clearly inspired by Goya's "Three of May" but with a totally different result.
In 1868, Manet would enter the Official Salon with "Portrait of Émile Zola" and "Woman with a Parrot." From this year on, he would spend his summers in Boulogne-sur-Mer, a French coastal town in the Pas-de-Calais region.
There he would perform some seascapes among others such as "Moonlight over the Port of Boulogne" and the "Departure of the steamer Flokestone" both from 1869.
At the 1869 Salon, he placed two works in the Official Salon: "The Balcony" and "Lunch in the Atelier". "The Balcony" which were not well received by critics for their lack of perspective.
In this painting appears the figure of Berthe Morisot, a young painter who upon meeting Manet at the Louvre became a great friend and ended up being portrayed in several of his paintings.
Berthe later married Manet's brother, Eugène. Among the most famous paintings Berthe modeled on are "Berthe Morisot in a Black Hat" and "Portrait of a Reclining Berthe Morisot" both from 1872, as well as "The Balcony".
In 1870, with the Franco-Prussian war, Manet took his family to the Spanish border and enlisted in the National Guard. He spent 1874 in Bennevilliers near Argenteuil where his friends Monet and Renoir were mostly painting outdoors.
Upon visiting Monet in Argenteuil, Manet and he took a boat out on the Seine River to paint. From this time he entered his painting "Monet on his studio boat" into the 1875 Salon. In 1876, Manet would hold a very successful private exhibition.
In the year 1881, Manet would win the right to participate permanently in the Official Salon without prior trial. In 1882, Manet presented his last painted picture "Bar at Folies-Bergère" at the Paris Salon.
Death of Édouard Manet
Manet contracted syphilis which caused him much pain and partial paralysis. In 1883, Manet had his left leg amputated due to gangrene and died days later. He was 51 years old when he died and is buried in Passy Cemetery in Paris.
Auction
On February 26, 2021 the painting of a dog that the artist painted in 1879 was auctioned in Paris. After reaching 520,800 euros.