|
Édouard Manet (January 23, 1832 - April 30, 1883) was a noted French painter. One of the first nineteenth-century artists to approach modern-life
subjects, his works bridged the gap between realism and Impressionism.
Édouard Manet was born in Paris, France; his mother, Eugénie-Desirée
Fournier, was the goddaughter of a Swedish prince, and his father, Auguste Manet, was a French judge. He wanted Édouard to also pursue a career in law,
but Édouard wanted a career in the arts. His uncle, Charles Fournier, encouraged him to pursue painting
seriously; he often took young Édouard to exhibitions at the Louvre.
|
From 1850 to 1856, after failing his naval examinations, Manet went to study under academic painter Thomas Couture. He would copy the Old Masters in the Louvre in
his spare time. He spent some time visiting Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, during which he absorbed the influences of the Dutch painter Frans Hals and the
Spanish artists Diego Velasquez and Francisco José de Goya.
Manet, in imitation of the current style of Realism initiated by Gustave Courbet, painted many everyday subjects like beggars, cafés, bullfights, and other events
and scenery. He produced very few religious, mythological, or historical paintings.
One of Manet's most famous paintings at this time is
Le Déjeuner Sur L'herbe ("The Lunch On The Grass").
The Salon refused to exhibit it in 1863 but he exhibited it at The Salon Des Refusés ("Exhibition Of Refused Works") later in the year.
Its juxtaposition of dressed men and a nude woman was controversial, as was its abbreviated sketch-like style - an innovation that distinguished
Manet from Courbet.
|
|
However, Manet's composition derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving The Judgment Of Paris (C. 1510) after a drawing by Raphael. Manet was taking respected works
by renaissance artists and updating them, a practice he also adopted in Olympia (1863), a nude portrayed in a style that recalled the early studio photographs of the
day, but which was based on Titian's Venus Of Urbino (1538).
The roughly-painted style and 'photographic' lighting in these works was seen as specifically modern, and as a challenge to the Renaissance works
Manet updated. His work is considered to be early modern because of its black outlining of figures that draws attention to the surface of the picture
plane and the materiality of paint.
Manet consistently believed that modern artists should seek to exhibit at the Salon rather than abandon it. He became friends with the Impressionists Edgar
Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, and Camille Pissarro in part through his sister-in-law Berthe Morisot, who was a member of
the group. His own work had influenced and anticipated the Impressionist style. However, 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 of his disapproval of their opposition to the Salon system. Nevertheless,
when Manet was excluded from the International exhibition of 1867, he set up his own exhibition.
However, he was influenced by the Impressionists, especially by Monet, and to an extent Morisot. Manet was influenced to use lighter colors. Nevertheless he
retained his distinctive use of blocks of black, uncharacteristic of other Impressionists. He painted many plein air studies - paintings created outdoors - but
always returned to what he considered serious work in the studio.
Throughout his life, though resisted by art critics, Manet had many champions. He knew Zola, who supported him publicly in the press, and Mallarmé, as well as
Baudelaire, who had challenged him to depict life as it was. He in turn made many sketchings of them.
Manet died of untreated syphilis, which caused him much pain and partial paralysis from locomotor ataxia in his late days. His left foot was amputated
because of gangrene eleven days before he died. He died in Paris in 1883 and is buried in the Cimetière de Passy, Paris, France.
In recent years, the price for his works exceeded US$26 million.
