Édouard Manet was born in 1832 into a prosperous and well connected Parisian family: father August Manet was an officer in the Ministry of Justice, while mother Eugénie-Désirée was a diplomat’s daughter and god-daughter of the Swedish crown prince. Manet thus received the benefit of an excellent education, and yet was not particularly academically inclined. His uncle Charles Fournier, however, recognized his budding artistic talent, and cultivated the young Manet’s artistic education with frequent trips to the Louvre.

Manet attempted to enroll in the naval academy in 1848, but twice failed the entrance examinations, and thus decided to devote himself to painting. After studying at the Thomas Couture Studio for six years, Manet travelled through Europe to gain exposure to the masterpieces of Western art and enrich his artistic education.

By 1856 Manet had his own atelier and was developing his mature style, characterized in this period by loose, visible brushwork, increasing abstraction of details, and abrupt transitions from light to dark. Notable works from this period include The Absinthe Drinker, as well as other depictions of contemporary and often low-class subjects, including café scenes, bullfights, singers and beggars.

Throughout the 1860s Manet’s production was prolific. While other avant-garde artists broke away from the system of the Academy and rebelled against the conservative Salons, Manet continued to submit his works to the annual Grand Salon, with some initial success. In 1861, Manet’s The Spanish Singer was not only accepted into the exhibition, but was even awarded an honorable mention.

This trend was to violently change in 1863, when Manet submitted the infamous Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, or Luncheon on the Grass. This modern-day adaptation of the Renaissance Fête Champêtre by Giorgione depicted two fully clothed young Parisian men dining in the company of a nude young lady, her dress discarded at her feet, gazing defiantly at the viewer. The work was refused, and Manet exhibited it in the Salon des Refusés, where it met with critical ridicule, massive crowds appeared just to see the scandalizing work.

Inflamed by his failure, Manet resolved to mount his own, solo exhibition with the money from his inheritance, much to his bourgeois family’s chagrin. As was to be expected, the show was another critical failure, but proved inspirational for the young artists who attended, and brought Manet together with future Impressionist painters like Degas.

History then intervened, and Manet was required to leave Paris to fight as a gunner in the Franco-Prussian war, after which he moved with his family to the Pyrenees, where he executed The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama. Manet continued submitting works to the Salon up until the end; his Hamlet was admitted in 1877, though Nana was refused. His greatest success was in 1881, with four paintings admitted in the Salon: In the Conservatory, In a Boat, and portraits of Rochefort and Proust. Manet was decorated with the Legion of Honor on December 31, 1881, and died in Paris two years later. In addition to his paintings, Manet left behind several pastels and engravings.

Works:

The vast majority of Manet’s paintings depict scenes from daily life, observed on the streets of Paris. His café scenes serve as fascinating windows onto the actuality of Parisian social life at the end of the nineteenth century, showing common people merely waiting, reading, listening to music, drinking, or talking amongst themselves. His paintings were often based on hastily executed sketches of scenes Manet observed on the street.

Although spurned by the critics, Manet’s supporters in the art world were numerous and ardent, including writer Émile Zola, poet Stéphane Mallarmé, and poet Charles Baudelaire, who was Manet’s inspiration to depict the actuality of modern life. Manet immortalized all of these writers with drawn or painted portraits.