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MANET, Edouard/ ARTISTS 1650-1899/ ART MAIN original lfff site
(b. Jan 23, 1832, Paris, France, d. April 30, 1883, Paris) film and food
French painter and printmaker who in his own work accomplished the transition from the realism of Gustave Courbet to Impressionism. Manet broke new ground in choosing subjects from the events and appearances of his own time and in stressing the definition of painting as the arrangement of paint areas on a canvas over and above its function as representation. Exhibited in 1863 at the Salon des Refusés, his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ("Luncheon on the Grass") aroused the hostility of the critics and the enthusiasm of a group of young painters who later formed the nucleus of the Impressionists. His other notable works include Olympia (1863) and A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882). music and food
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  L'Absinthe has been a bistro for decades, conveniently sited near the Louvre and Tuileries, but since the Michel Rostang group have taken it over and extended it, it has become something of a haute bistro. Still relaxed, still low-key, but with a bit of Manhattan about it as well as Paris. The dishes are bistro-style with aspiration.
The Absinthe Drinker
1859

oil on canvas 117.5 x 103cm
NY Carlsberg Glyptotek
  cafe society
The Salon rejected this painting on several counts. The Baudelairian subject matter of a drunk offended public morals and the loose handling and lack of definition of the painting outraged the critics. The bottom 16 inches of the painting was added in 1867 completing the figure, adding the glass of absinthe and the bottle.

Absinthe was served from fountains placed behind the bar and was poured onto a spoonful of sugar. By 1874 two million gallons of absinthe were being consumed a year in France.
 
Eel and Red Snapper
1864

oil on canvas 38x46cm
Musee d'Orsay
Fish and Oyster
or Still Life with Fish
1864

oil on canvas, 71 x 91cm
Art Institute of Chicago
 
   

Luncheon on the Grass (Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe)

1863

Oil on canvas, 81 x 101 cm

Musee d'Orsay

   
The active spirit of independance in Impressionism, if not its style, may be considered to date from this famous work, refused by the Salon in 1863 and exhibited, under the title of Le Bain at the Salon des Refusés of the same year. It is the larger of Manet's two versions of the subject, a smaller and freer version being in the Courtauld Institute Gallery in London. According to Antonin Proust, the idea of the picture suggested itself to Manet when they were watching bathers at Argenteuil. Manet was reminded of Giorgione's Concert Champêtre and determined to repeat the theme in clearer colour and with modern personnel. A closer likeness of composition has been found in an engraving by Marcantonio of a group of river gods, after a now lost original by Raphael of The Judgement of Paris. An Old Master element of formal arrangement remains to distinguish it from an essentially Impressionist work and yet as well as being ostensibly set in the open there are various hints and suggestions in light and colour of fresh possibilities in open-air painting. The furious outcry it caused as the principal exhibit among the Salon rejects was based on the alleged indecency of two fully-dressed men appearing in the company of the naked female bather (an accusation no one had thought to make against the comparable juxtaposition in the work attributed to Giorgione). But the respectable persons represented in sedate conversation were Manet's favourite model, Victorine Meurend (whom he also painted as a toreador), his brother-in-law, Ferdinand Leenhoff, and Manet's younger brother, Eugène.
Public hostility not only helped to make Manet a hero in the eyes of the young painters but brought together in his support the group from which the Impressionists emerged.
 

How far Claude Monet was impressed by the picture may be gauged from the fact that in 1865 he decided to paint his own Déjeuner sur l'Herbe, though simply as a group of picnickers without the element of dress and undress and in more natural attitudes than the figures in Manet's composition. Only a fragment of this large work has survived but a Déjeuner sur l'Herbe by Monet in the Hermitage, Leningrad, is apparently a replica---not so grand a work as Manet's but with more veracity of informal, sun-lit grouping. Manet himself changed the title of his painting to Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe at his exhibition of challenge and protest in 1867. It came to the Louvre as part of the Moreau-Nelaton Collection in 1906.

 
 
Edouard Manet, (1832-1883)
The Lemon, 1880
14 x 22 cm
Oil on canvas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
   
   
Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère
1881-82
Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
   
This sparkling portrayal shows extensive use of peinture claire, a technique Manet himself evolved.