Manet, Edouard

(1832-1883)

   painter

   Edouard Manet, whose work inspired the impressionist style and whose far-reaching influence on painting and the general development of modern art was due to his choice of subject matter and use of color and technique, was born in Paris, the son of a high government official. Manet early gave up the study of law and began a naval career (1848-49). He then returned to Paris to study under the French academic painter Thomas couture (1850) and subsequently visited Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands to study the styles of the old masters. The Dutch artist Frans Hals and the spanish painters Diego Velazquez and Francisco de Goya were his principal influences. Manet began to paint genre subjects (including café denizens, street urchins, and beggars), adopting a bold, direct brush technique as he portrayed realistic themes. in 1859, the Paris salon rejected his The Absinthe Drinker, but in 1861 accepted his portrait M et Mme Manet and The Guitar Player, works that show the influence of gustave courbet and of Spanish painters. In 1862, after the arrival of a spanish troop in Paris, Manet painted Lola de Valence (1862), which inspired a poem by his friend and admirer charles Baudelaire. In 1863, Manet showed his Music in the Tuileries, and the nonconformism of this painting brought a violent response from the critics. in the same year, his famous Luncheon on the Grass (1862), shown at the salon des Refusés (a new exhibition place opened by napoléon III in response to the protests of artists rejected by the official salon), produced an even more bitter attack. Manet was, however, hailed by younger artists as their leader and he became the central figure in the dispute between the academic and the nonconformist factions. in 1864, the official salon accepted two of his paintings and, in 1865, he exhibited his Olympia (1863), inspired by Titian's Venus of Urbino, which aroused storms of protest in academic circles because of its unorthodox realism. He left France for a while to visit Spain and, on his return (1866), began meeting at the café Guerbois with claude monet, pierre renoir, paul cézanne, camille pissarro, edgar degas, Alfred Sisley, and émile zola, who championed Manet's style of art and became a close friend. In 1868, he met berthe morisot (The Blacony; Portrait of B. Morisot, 1872) who influenced him to do more open-air painting. in 1874, he worked with Monet at Argenteuil, and experimented in the use of natural light (On the Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil, 1874). Again rejected and strongly criticized, Manet in the following years painted numerous portraits (Mallarmé, 1876; Nana, 1876; Clemenceau, 1878; Zola, 1879), still lifes (Asparagus, 1880), and outdoor or particular scenes (The Waitress, 1878; Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1881). Ill and partially paralyzed after 1880, Manet, who did not gain recognition until late in life, turned more and more to pastels and watercolors. There was also a Japanese influence on his work. At the center of the impressionist movement, he was awarded the legion of honor in 1882. Manet has left, besides many pastels and watercolors, more than 400 paintings.