Édouard Manet (23 January 1832 – 30 Apr i l 1883)

A French Painter- Transformed Realism to Impressionism

BiographyBorn in Paris on 23 January 1832

Family background

His mother, Eugénie-Desirée Fournier, was the daughter of a diplomat and the goddaughter of the Swedish crown prince, Charles Bernadotte

His father, Auguste Manet, was a French judge who expected Édouard to pursue a career in law.

His uncle, Charles Fournier, encouraged him to pursue painting and often took him to the Louvre.

BiographyThe Road Map to Success

1845, he enrolled in a special course of drawing where he met Antonin Proust, future Minister of Fine Arts

From 1850 to 1856, Manet studied under the academic painter Thomas Couture, a painter of large historical paintings

In his spare time he copied the old masters in the Louvre

1853 to 1856 he visited Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, during which he absorbed the influences of the various painters

In 1856, he opened his own studio

Masterworks Music in the Tuileries

Inspired by Hals and Velázquez

Harbinger of his life-long interest in the subject of leisure

Depicted his friends, artists, authors, and musicians who take part, and he has included a self-portrait among the subjects

Hangs in the National Gallery, London

Masterworks Le déjeuner sur l'herbe

originally titled Le Bain

The Paris Salon rejected it for exhibition in 1863 but he exhibited it at the Salon des Refusés

The painting's juxtaposition of fully-dressed men and a nude woman was controversial

Use of broad "photographic" light, which casts almost no shadows: in fact, the lighting of the scene is inconsistent and unnatural

Masterworks Olympia

The painting raised an issue of the roles of women within society

inspired by Japanese wood block art

The painting was controversial partly because the nude is wearing some small items of clothing such as an orchid in her hair, a bracelet, a ribbon around her neck, and mule slippers, all of which accentuated her nakedness

Painting Style The roughly painted style and photographic

lighting in these works was seen as specifically modern

His work is considered 'early modern', partially because of the black outlining of figures, which draws attention to the surface of the picture plane and the material quality of paint

Manet incorporated some of the techniques of plein air painting by Berthe Morisot into his paintings

His own work influenced and anticipated the Impressionist style

Gallery

Gallery