Édouard Manet, The First Impressionist

Édouard Manet was a 19th-century French painter. With his striking style and focus, he was an inspiration to countless later painters. Manet paved a new path by challenging the traditional subjects of painting and depicting the events and circumstances of his time.

In 1863 he exhibited his painting  Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.  The critics tore him apart. At the same time, he received praise and enthusiasm from a younger generation of painters. These would go further and form the core of Impressionism.

Édouard Manet: The First Impressionist

His early life

Édouard Manet was born in Paris on January 23, 1832. His father, August Manet was a high-ranking member of the Ministry of Justice. His mother, Eugénie-Désirée Fournier, was the daughter of a diplomat and the godson of a Swedish prince in line to become king.

It was a wealthy family with many contacts. Manet’s parents hoped he would choose a respectful career, preferably as a lawyer. How could they know that life had a very different path in store for him.

In 1839 he studied at the Canon Polloup school in Vaugirard. From 1844 to 1848 he was a student at boarding school at the Collège Rollin. He was not a good student. The only lesson that interested him was the one painting lesson they gave.

His father wanted him to enroll in law school. However, Édouard decided not to follow this path. When his father refused to let him become a painter, he applied for a place in the naval school but failed the entrance exam.

Barely sixteen years old, he set sail as an apprentice on a transport ship. When he returned to France in June 1849, he failed again in his naval exam. After that, his parents finally gave in to his stubborn persistence to become a painter.

The first official studies of Manet

In 1850 Manet began studying with the classical painter Thomas Couture. It was with him that he developed an insight into painting and its techniques.

After six years with Couture, Manet started a shared studio in 1856 with Albert de Balleroy, an artist who created military paintings. It was here that he  painted Boy with Cherries  (1858). He soon moved to another studio where he painted the  Absinthe Drinker  (1859).

In the same year he made short trips to the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. In between trips, he also spent time in the Louvre, copying paintings by Tiziano and Diego Velázquez.

Despite his success with realism, Manet began to paint in a more relaxed, impressionistic style. One of its main features was his use of broad strokes and the depiction of ordinary people performing daily tasks.

His canvases began to fill with singers, people on the street, Roman people and beggars. These unusual subjects combined with a great knowledge of the old masters surprised some people and amazed many others.

The adult life of Édouard Manet and Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe

Between 1862 and 1865, Édouard Manet took part in some exhibitions of the Galería Martinet. In 1863 he married Suzanne Leenhoff, a Dutch woman who had given him piano lessons. They had been together for ten years and had a child together before they officially married.

In the same year, the Salon jury rejected  Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe  . He had painted it in a completely revolutionary style.

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe  was inspired by the works of old masters such as  The Pastoral Concert  (Giorgione, 1510) and  The Judgment of Paris  (Raphael, 1517 – 1520). The painting caused a great stir. It was the beginning of the “laughable notoriety” that would plague him throughout his career.

His critics were offended by the fact that a naked woman was in the company of two young men wearing contemporary clothes. It didn’t seem like a hazy allegorical figure to them. On the contrary, the modernity of women made them notice her nakedness as vulgar and possibly threatening.

It also disturbed the critics that Manet had painted these people in a harsh, impersonal light. They also had a hard time understanding why the people were in a wooded area that was clearly not realistic.

His main works

Two years later he made his painting  Olympia.  In 1865 it caused yet another scandal in the Salon. It shows a naked woman lying down and looking boldly at the viewer. He painted it with a hard, bright light that almost erases the inner space and turns it into a kind of two-dimensional figure.

Both the critics and the public determined that this contemporary odalisque was indecent. In 1907, the French statesman Georges Clemenceau would go on to place it in the Louvre.

Deeply touched by this treatment, Manet left for Spain in August 1865. His stay there, however, was short-lived. He didn’t like the food and it frustrated him that he didn’t speak the language.

While in Madrid he met Théodore Duret. He eventually became one of the main champions of his work. In 1866 he also came into contact with the novelist Emile Zola. They made friends. Zola wrote a brilliant article in the French newspaper Figaro in 1867 .

Zola pointed out that almost every major artist started by offending public sensibilities. This review impressed the art critic Louis-Edmond Duranty. He also went to support Manet. Later, Cézanne, Gauguin, Degas and Monet also became followers of Édouard Manet.

The later years

In 1874 Manet received an invitation to participate in the first exhibition by Impressionist painters. Despite his support for the movement, he declined the invitation and all invitations sent after the first.

Manet felt that he should continue to focus on the Salon and his place in the art world. Like many of his paintings, Édouard Manet was a contradiction. He was at once bourgeois and ordinary, traditional and radical.

A year after the first exhibition of Impressionist paintings, he had the opportunity to create illustrations for the French edition  of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Crow  . In 1881, the French government awarded him the Légion d’honneur (legion of honour).

Two later, on April 30, 1883, he died in Paris. In addition to his 420 paintings, he left behind a reputation that would forever define as a courageous and influential artist.

The Legacy of Édouard Manet

When he made his debut as a painter, Manet faced a lot of critical resistance. Until almost the end of his career, that criticism never completely disappeared.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century his fame rose. This was due to the success of his memorable exhibition and the critical acceptance of the Impressionists. However, it wasn’t until the twentieth century that art historians gave him his status as one of the most important painters of his era.

Manet’s rejection of traditional models and perspectives was a symbol of the break with the academic way of painting of the nineteenth century. There is absolutely no doubt that his work helped to pave the way for the revolutionary work of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

He also had an important influence on much of the art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, if only because of his choice of subject. He focused on modern, urban themes and depicted them in a direct, almost detached way. This placed him even further from the Salon’s standards.