Édouard Manet
The bridge to modern art.
Manet painted the Paris of his day with flat areas of colour and sharp contrasts. His scandalous pictures made him a model for the Impressionists.
Édouard Manet was born in Paris in 1832 into a wealthy family. His father was a senior official in the Ministry of Justice and wanted his son to become a lawyer. Édouard tried instead to get into the naval college and as a teenager made a voyage to Rio de Janeiro as a cadet, but failed the entrance examination. In the end he was allowed to study painting and worked for six years in Thomas Couture's studio. He copied old masters in the Louvre and particularly admired Velázquez and Goya.
Manet wanted recognition at the official Salon but caused scandal instead. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863), with a naked woman sitting among clothed gentlemen in a park, was shown at the Salon des Refusés. Olympia (1863), a naked prostitute who looks straight at the viewer, was exhibited in 1865 and provoked fury. Both are in the Musée d'Orsay. What provoked people was not only the subjects but also the flat light, the sharp contrasts and the fact that the pictures felt contemporary and unidealised.
Manet painted modern Paris: cafés, streets, horse races and people from every social class. He liked to use black as a colour, and large, flat areas of colour. He also painted contemporary political events, such as The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. His last major work, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), is in the Courtauld Gallery in London. In it a barmaid stands in front of a mirror that does not quite show what it should.
In 1863 he married the Dutch piano teacher Suzanne Leenhoff. Her son Léon was brought up in the family, but who his father was remains unclear. Manet was a friend of the Impressionists but never exhibited with them, because he kept pinning his hopes on the Salon. Berthe Morisot married his brother. He was a friend of Émile Zola and Charles Baudelaire.
In his last years Manet suffered from syphilis. One of his legs was amputated, and he died shortly afterwards in 1883. He is often seen as the first modern painter. He broke with the rules of the Academy and paved the way for Impressionism and for the art of the 20th century.