Manet

Édouard Manet
French Impressionist painter, printmaker & draftsman
born 23 January 1832 - died 20 April 1883
Born in: Paris (Département de Ville de Paris, Ile-de-France, France).
Died in: Paris (Département de Ville de Paris, Ile-de-France, France)

Also known as: Édouard Manet.
Student of: Thomas Couture (1815-1879).
Teacher of: Eva Gonzalès (1849-1883).
Brother-in-law of: Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)

French painter and printmaker who in his own work accomplished the transition from the realism of Gustave Courbet to Impressionism. Manet broke new ground in choosing subjects from the events and appearances of his own time and in stressing the definition of painting as the arrangement of paint areas on a canvas over and above its function as representation. Exhibited in 1863 at the Salon des Refusés, his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ("Luncheon on the Grass") aroused the hostility of the critics and the enthusiasm of a group of young painters who later formed the nucleus of the Impressionists. His other notable works include Olympia (1863) and A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882).- Édouard Manet paintings for sale and Luncheon on the Grass, Olympia, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère oil paintings sale and his biography on this site.

MANET, ÉDUARD (1832-1883), French painter, regarded as the most important master of Impressionism (q.v.), was born in Paris on the 23rd of January 1832. After spending some time under the tuition of the Abbé Poiloup, Édouard Manet entered the College Rollin, where his passion for drawing led him to neglect all his other lessons. His studies finished in 1848, Édouard Manet was placed on board the ship Guadeloupe, voyaging to Rio de Janeiro. On his return Edouard Manet first studied in Couture's studio (1851), where his independence often infuriated his master. For six years Manet was an intermittent visitor to the studio, constantly taking leave to travel, and going first to Cassel, Dresden, Vienna and Munich, and afterwards to Florence, Rome and Venice, where Édouard Manet made some stay. Some important drawings date from this period, and one picture, A Nymph Surprised. Then, after imitating Couture, more or less, in The Absinthe-drinker (1866), and Courbet in The Old Musician, Édouard Manet devoted himself almost exclusively to the study of the Spanish masters in the Louvre. A group was already gathering round him: Whistler, Legros, and Fantin-Latour haunted his studio in the Rue Guyot. His Spaniard playing the Guitar, in the Salon of 1861, excited much animadversion. Delacroix alone defended Manet, but, this notwithstanding, his Fifer of the Guard and Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) were refused by the jury. Then the Salon des Refusés was opened, and round Manet a group was formed, including [Felix] Bracquemond, Legros, Jongkind, Whistler, Harpignies and Fantin-Latour, the writers Zola, [Edmond] Duranty and [Théodore] Duret, and Astruc the Sculptor. In 1863, when an amateur, M. Martinet, lent an exhibition-room to Édouard Manet, the painter exhibited fourteen pictures; and then, in 1864, contributed again to the Salon The Angels at the Tomb and A Bullfight. Of this picture Manet afterwards kept nothing but the toreador in the foreground, and it is now known as The Dead Man. In 1865 sent to the Salon Christ reviled by the Soldiers and the famous Olympia, which was hailed with mockery and laughter. It represents a girl body woman reclining on a couch, behind which is seen the head of a negl-ess who carries a bunch of flowers. A black cat at her feet emphasizes the whiteness of the sheet on which the woman lies. This work (now in the Louvre) was presented to the Luxembourg by a subscription started by Claude Monet (1890). It was hung in 1897 among the Caillebotte collection, which included the Balcony, and a study of a female head called Angelina. This production, of a highly independent individuality, secured his exclusion from the Salon of 1866, so that Édouard Manet determined to exhibit his pictures in a place apart during the Great Exhibition of 1867. In a large gallery in the Avenue de l'Alma, half of which was occupied by Courbet, Édouard Manet hung no fewer than fifty paintings. Only one important picture was absent, The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian; its exhibition was prohibited by the authorities. From that time, in spite of the fierce hostility of some adversaries, his energy and that of his supporters began to gain the day. His Young Girl (Salon of 1868) was justly appreciated, as well as the portrait of Lola; but the Balcony and the Breakfast (1869) were as severely handled as the Olympia had been. In 1870 Éduard Manet exhibited The Music Lesson and a portrait of Mile E. Gonzales. Not long before the Franco-Prussian War, Manet, finding himself in the country, with a friend, for the first time discovered the true value of open air to the effects of painting in his picture The Garden, which gave rise to the open air or plein air school. After fighting as a gunner, Edouard Manet returned to his family in the Pyrenees, where he painted The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama. His Bon Bock (1873) created a furoré.

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