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Édouard Manet
Paris, 1832-1883
Son of a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Justice, Manet decided to become a painter following two unsuccessful attempts to enter Naval College. From 1850 to 1856 he studied in the studio of Thomas Couture where he was a fellow student of his childhood friend Antonin Proust, later to become Minister of Culture. Manet greatly admired the Old Masters and painted copies in the Louvre of works by Italian Renaissance artists, as well as travelling to Belgium, Holland and Germany. Later, his veneration for the work of Velazquez, Murillo and Zurbarán led him to paint subjects inspired by Spain, where he travelled in 1865.
Manet's painting evolved from his initial, tenebrist style influenced by Spanish art towards a lighter and more luminous style, based for the first time on modern, urban life. This subject matter, whose development was undoubtedly influenced by his friend Charles Baudelaire, with its daringly light and brilliant technique, meant that he was systematically rejected by the official Salons, while at the same time he was increasingly appreciated by the young Impressionist painters, who tried without success to persuade him to take part in their exhibitions.
Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), included in the first Salon des Refusés of 1863, caused a major reaction, both for its subject as well as for its technique, only comparable with the scandal which arose shortly afterwards over his Olympia (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), shown at the Salon of 1865. The greatest success of his career was his Bar au Folies-Bergère (Courtauld Institute, London), shown at the 1882 Salon.
Towards the end of his life Manet painted numerous portraits of women, both in oil and in pastel, as well as numerous still lifes and gardens. His technique, which became ever looser and more spontaneous, opened up new way which was to lead to modern painting. As Henri Matisse wrote some years after Manet's death, "[by being] the first painter to achieve the immediate translation of the sensations, [Manet] freed the painter's instinct".
baudelaire, ch.: Le Peintre de la vie moderne. Paris, 1868.
Daix, P.: La Vie de peintre d'Édouard Manet. Paris, 1983.
Jamot, P. and Wildenstein, G.: Manet. 2 vols., Paris, 1932.
Pickvance, R.: Manet. Exhibition catalogue Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, 1996.
Proust, A.: Édouard Manet: souvenirs. Paris, 1913 (Caen, 1988).
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