Édouard Manet
1832 -1883
Édouard Manet was a French painter. Manet was one of the first nineteenth century artists to approach modern-life subjects. He was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. His early masterworks "The Luncheon on the Grass" and "Olympia" engendered great controversy, and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.
Édouard Manet was born in Paris in 1832 to an affluent and well connected family, mother, Eugénie-Desirée Fournier and his father, Auguste Manet.
From 1850 to 1856, Manet studied under the academic painter Thomas Couture. In his spare time he copied the old masters in the Louvre. He was influenced by the Frans Hals, Diego Velázquez and Francisco José de Goya. Soon after, he opened his own studio. His early style was characterized by loose brush strokes, simplification of details, and the suppression of transitional tones. Adopting the current style of realism initiated by Gustave Courbet, he painted "The Absinthe Drinker" and other contemporary subjects such as beggars, singers, Gypsies, people in cafés, and bullfights.
A major early work is "The Luncheon on the Grass " and ". The Paris Salon rejected it for exhibition in 1863, but he exhibited it at the Salon des Refusés later in the year. The painting's juxtaposition of fully-dressed men and a nude woman was controversial, with its abbreviated, sketch-like handling, which was an innovation that distinguished Manet from Courbet. Manet's composition reveals his study of the old masters, but at the same time this controversial approach raised the issue of provocative questions within contemporary French society. The roughly painted style and photographic lighting was seen as specifically modern because of the black outlining of figures, which draws attention to the surface of the picture plane and the material quality of paint.
He became friends with the Impressionists Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, and Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot. He was influenced by the Impressionists, especially Monet and Morisot. Their influence is seen in Manet's use of lighter colors, but he retained his distinctive use of black, uncharacteristic of Impressionist painting. He painted many outdoor pieces, but always returned to what he considered the serious work of the studio.
Manet's paintings of cafe scenes are observations of social life in nineteenth century Paris. Many of these paintings were based on sketches executed on the spot, and are painted in a style which is loose, referencing Hals and Velázquez.
Manet died of untreated syphilis and rheumatism, at the age of fifty-one in Paris in 1883.
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