Édouard Manet, the rebel painter
Édouard Manet was born in Paris on January 23, 1832. He was the son of a well-educated and wealthy family with a very comfortable social position. Thanks to his uncle, Charles Fournier, he soon developed a strong interest in the arts, leading him to pursue an artistic career. His father, unfortunately, did not agree with this passion of his and tried to hinder it in every way. Wishing for his son to become an important magistrate, he decided to enroll him in the prestigious Rollin College, at the Faculty of Law. But soon, his natural inclinations came out, and he proved to be a mediocre and inattentive student. After abandoning his Academic career, his father chose for him a career as a naval commander. This endeavour again demonstrated Manet’s deep calling and how no other path would have been right for him. Faced with this realisation, his father relented and allowed him to enter a career in the Arts. So, from 1850 to 1856, Manet studied under the teaching of the academic painter Thomas Couture, the artist who had a great reputation within the Parisian culture of the time. During this period, he made several study trips in Europe that were crucial to his artistic maturation. He visited Amsterdam, Venice, Florence, Dresden, Munich, Prague, and other important cities that provided him with a broad knowledge of the artistic and cultural landscape of the period.
A revolutionary painting style | Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a key and transitional figure in 19th-century French painting. At first, he was greatly influenced by Spanish painting, particularly by Velazquez and Goya. In later years, the influences of Japanese art and photography appeared, which are found extensively within his paintings. Manet developed a style of painting greatly influenced by his old masters, but within which he introduced fundamental changes. He replaced the classical style that was widely present in the painting of the time with a realistic naturalism. He found his subjects in contemporary Parisian life, in gardens, parks, and cafés. In his painting, he filled the transition from Realism to Impressionism, beginning with the main compositional elements of the former but moving toward a more modern approach to painting, thanks in part to the new centrality given to the subject.
The overturning of social morality | Édouard Manet
In 1863, however, he painted two works that would provoke a strong public reaction: Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia. Both paintings portray naked women: clear attacks on the conventional morality of the time. Although both were based on Renaissance models- a Raffaello and a Tiziano, respectively- they completely subverted them. The first one was judged by the critics and the public as vulgar and obscene, not only because of the subject matter but also for its modernity of colour and compositional style. The imperial court itself declared the painting “an offence against decency.” Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe represented the provocative representation of an inevitable “loss of innocence,” where nudity, far from recalling noble ideals of high purity, was shown as a provocation to morality. Moreover, the large format, which was traditionally reserved for history painting, was for the first time reserved for an everyday scene such as an outdoor breakfast. His paintings upset people, and after receiving some recognition at the Salon, the official art exhibition of the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he was rejected for several years.
Manet and his detachment from the Impressionists
His portraits were very unconventional. His subjects did not even look directly at the viewer, or if they did, they did so in a demanding way. In fact, as a Realist painter, he painted portraits of real people with real expressions. Manet himself said, “There is no symmetry in nature. One eye is never the same as the other. There is always a difference. We all have a more or less crooked nose and an irregular mouth.” Manet painted en Plein air, as did many other Impressionists, making sketches on the spot and returning to the studio to complete his paintings. Although Manet was often in the company of members of the Impressionist group, including Degas and Monet, he never wanted to adhere to the group. Deeply irritated that he was often mistaken for Monet, he never painted a truly Impressionist painting.
Recognition after death | Édouard Manet
Although many considered him a great artist, Manet did not have much recognition in his lifetime from the society of the time. Almost all of his paintings were exhibited in a pavilion placed alongside the official exhibition, the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the Rejected), in which paintings rejected by the exhibition jury were collected. Unfortunately, his main goal of fighting for full freedom of expression failed miserably because of the strong opposition his works aroused. Most of his paintings were in fact misunderstood by critics, and, as if that was not enough, Manet’s health also started to deteriorate. He developed rheumatism and paralysis in his legs as a result of syphilis and died at only 51 and lacking the success his art would have required and deserved. Today, his paintings are considered some of the greatest masterpieces of 19th-century modern art and are exhibited in the most important European and global museums. Manet’s paintings nevertheless obtained the acclaim of writers and other artists. He was appreciated by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, and others, while he, in turn, greatly admired many of his contemporaries and Francisco Goya and Diego Velázquez, among artists of the past. Nowadays, Manet is universally recognised as one of the greatest and most celebrated painters known throughout the world.
References
Michael Prodger (2022), In Focus: Edouard Manet, the man who shocked France with nudity, executions and everyday life [Online] Available at: https://www.countrylife.co.uk/luxury/art-and-antiques/in-focus-edouard-manet-the-man-who-shocked-france-249464 [Accessed date: 2022/12/23]
Lisa Marder (2019) Painting Techniques and Style of Edouard Manet [Online] Available at: https://www.liveabout.com/techniques-and-style-of-edouard-manet-2578567 [Accessed date: 2022/12/23]
Nathaniel Harris (1989) The Paintings of Manet [Published Book] (Mallard Press, New York)
Elena Gaia (2022) The painter of modern nonconformist life [Online] Available at: https://www.meer.com/it/68979-edouard-manet [Accessed date: 2022/12/24]
