Edouard Manet
Born – Paris, France 1832
Died – Paris, France 1883
Manet was concerned to rid the painted interpretation of contemporary life of artifice and contrived effects, admiring the revolutionary changes brought to painting by Courbet. He abandoned his law studies to train in the studio of Thomas Couture from 1850-1956. Like Courbet, Manet copied from Old Masters in the Louvre rather than rely on traditional teaching methods. Although Manet’s paintings were controversial, their subjects were free from social satire. Paintings made around 1865, such as Le Déjeuner Sur I’Herbe and Olympia were rejected by the official Salon and caused a scandal when exhibited at the Salon des Réfusés. The frank depiction of naked women in compositions that were inspired by Italian masters but which contravened academic rules was unacceptable. Manet’s unconventionally high-key, freely handled paint and suppression of half-tones, in favour of direct lighting and harsh contrasts, added to the offence. The Balcony is an unorthodox composition, cut almost in half by the bright-green linear construction of the framework in the immediate foreground. It is like a snap taken with a flash-bulb, immediate and offering little sense of spatial recession while giving an exciting sense of real life as Manet saw it.
Masterpieces:
- Bar at the Folies-Bergére
- La Musique aux Tuileries
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.