Picture of the day

Edouard Manet - Luncheon on the Grass; Musee d'Orsay; Oil on canvas, 81 x 101 cm

Manet, Edouard (b. Jan. 23, 1832, Paris, France--d. April 30, 1883, Paris) French painter and printmaker who in his own work accomplished the transition from the realism of Gustave Courbet to Impressissionism 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 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.