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).
The Absinthe Drinker
1859
oil on canvas 117.5 x 103cm
NY Carlsberg Glyptotek
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 independence 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 guaged 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.
The
Luncheon in the Studio
1868
Oil on canvas, 120 x 154 cm
Neue Pinakothek, Munich
The
Luncheon in the Studio is perhaps Manet's finest painting in this
period. It is a portrait of Léon Leenhoff, said to have been born to
Manet and his future wife Suzanne Leenhoff before they were married. The
young man was sixteen years old when thus represented, and his mother
continued to present him as her younger brother. The name of Vermeer has
been cited in relation to this picture, in which Manet contrived an
elegant harmony between the distribution of light and the delicately
contrasted yellows and blacks.
The Lemon, 1880
14 x 22 cm
Oil on canvas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
This sparkling portrayal shows extensive use of peinture
claire, a technique Manet
himself evolved. Attention, mes camarades
anglais, observe nostalgically the Double Diamond light ale bottle,
bottom right. It is genuine, I can assure you, having researched this
very bouteille
before delivering a lecture at the City Lit in the 1980s!
If you are under 40, you will not have heard of it - me - or the 'light
ale of which we speak.' Tant pis!Picture for Women
was inspired by
Edouard Manet's masterpiece
A Bar at the
Folies-Bergères
(1881–82). In Manet's painting,
a barmaid gazes out of frame, observed by a shadowy
male figure. The whole scene appears to be reflected
in the mirror behind the bar, creating a complex web
of viewpoints. Wall borrows the internal structure
of the painting, and motifs such as the light bulbs
that give it spatial depth. The figures are
similarly reflected in a mirror, and the woman has
the absorbed gaze and posture of Manet's barmaid,
while the man is the artist himself. Though issues
of the male gaze, particularly the power
relationship between male artist and female model,
and the viewer's role as onlooker, are implicit in
Manet's painting, Wall updates the theme by
positioning the camera at the centre of the work, so
that it captures the act of making the image (the
scene reflected in the mirror) and, at the same
time, looks straight out at us. The seam running down
the middle of the photograph is apparent in some of Wall's
large-scale pictures, where two pieces of transparency are
joined. The fact that it serves as a reminder of the artifice of
picture making is something that Wall has come to appreciate:
'The join between the two pictures brings your eye up to the
surface again and creates a dialectic that I always enjoyed and
learned from painting... a dialectic between depth and flatness.
Sometimes I hide it, sometimes I don't', he has said.
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).
, 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. 
himself evolved. Attention, mes camarades
anglais, observe nostalgically the Double Diamond light ale bottle,
bottom right. It is genuine, I can assure you, having researched this
very 
before delivering a lecture at the City Lit in the 1980s!
If you are under 40, you will not have heard of it - me - or the 'light
ale of which we speak.' Tant pis!