Biography

Édouard Manet Biography

Édouard Manet (1832 - 1883) was a French painter and printmaker who introduced a new era of modern, urban subject matter to audiences in the mid -- to -- late -- 19th century. Although he is classified as a Realist, he also influenced -- and was influenced by -- the French Impressionist painters of the 1870's.

Manet has been universally regarded as the "Father of Modernism." He was among the first artists to take serious risks in both subject matter and technique. His subjects are varied and include conventional depictions of upper-class life, both in-and outside of Paris-scenes of boating and leisure, urban landscapes, and private garden spaces, as well as indoor portraits of family and friends. Works that fall into the latter category read like casual snapshots, where Manet was able to create an intimate environment for his sitters as a photographer would. This is illustrated below in Reading, where his wife looks to one side distractedly, absorbed in self-reflection.

In stark contrast to Manet’s Reading, where the subtle nuances of an upper-class lifestyle come through, the artist also painted portraits of working-class Parisians, featuring actors, street performers, musicians, waitresses, and last but not least, prostitutes.

Olympia is Manet’s most famous work of a prostitute. She wears only her jewelry and reclines confidently on a daybed of silken bed sheets. This image recalls the low status of a prostitute who has been afforded certain luxuries by her clients, highlighting her brazen confidence. She looks directly and confidently at viewers. It is for this reason that Manet’s painting was met with public outrage. Today, however, Olympia is prized for its startling quality and historical significance.

Manet’s two paintings illustrate one of many dichotomies that he gravitated toward artistically. Though born into an upper-class lifestyle to a mother with familial ties to Swedish royalty and a father who was a high-ranking judge, Édouard found his calling elsewhere: on the streets of Paris, capturing life as he saw it. Set against the backdrop of the city, his work aptly demonstrates the tensions between public and private space, work, and leisure, as well as bourgeois and working-class lifestyles. Manet’s paintings present today’s viewer with a keen sense of what life was like during the 19th century.

Édouard Manet Early Life and Work (1832-62)

Édouard Manet was the eldest of three sons of Auguste Manet, a distinguished civil servant in the Ministry of Justice, and Eugénie Désirée Fournier, daughter of a diplomatic envoy to the Swedish court. Although Manet showed talent for drawing and caricature at an early age, his career as an artist began only after his secondary education at the Collège Rollin, and two attempts to enter the naval college. Encouraged by an uncle and by his friend, Antonin Proust, Manet enrolled at the workshop of Thomas Couture in September 1850 to pursue his artistic studies. Among his earliest extant works are copies made in the Louvre after Venetian and Florentine Renaissance masters and Dutch-genre painters. These helped him to understand the contours of the female form.

In February 1856, Édouard Manet established his own studio on the rue Lavoisier with fellow painter Albert de Balleroy. The next year, he traveled to Italy to further develop his technique, which at this time was characterized by loose brush strokes, simplification of details, and the suppression of transitional tones.

Adopting a Realist sensibility within his works, Manet subsequently painted The Absinthe Drinker, a full-length portrait of a down-and-out drunk. This was one of many large portraits Manet painted during this period featuring modern working-class citizens.

Controversy of Subject and Technique (1863 - 70)

In 1863 Manet used his skill as a portraitist to combine working-class and wealthy citizens within a single image. Here, in Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, two naked women who were presumed to be prostitutes sit unabashedly alongside two distinguished gentleman of Paris’s newly formed upper-middle class. This work was exhibited at the Salon des Refuses the same year and caused an outrage from the public.

In addition to interpreting Manet’s eclectic cast of characters, audiences felt dismayed by the stark way in which the work was painted. There was a perceived “flatness” to the women’s nakedness that defied the painterly conventions of the time. Several years later, Manet submitted The Fifer to the Salon of 1866, and it was rejected outright because of its similar “flat” quality.

The Prussian War and its Aftereffects (1870 - 79)

In July 1870, France declared war on Prussia. After Napoleon III surrendered his troops in Northeast France, Paris soon came under siege from the Prussian army. Manet closed his studio at the rue Guyot. He joined the war as an artilleryman and sent his family to the country. Four months later Paris surrendered, and Manet was free to rejoin his family. When Manet returned to Paris in May 1871, France was in the depths of a civil war, as conflicting ideologies divided the nation.

The Prussian War and the French civil war affected Manet profoundly, causing him to suffer bouts of depression. He found life as a soldier “boring and sad.” His works during this time convey the sentiments of war.

In the period after the war, Manet reverted to more traditional compositions of couples boating or spending time in cafés. Perhaps these compositions served as a romantic counterpoint to the gritty scenes and isolating moments witnessed prior.

The Last Years: Atelier 77 rue d’Amsterdam (1879 - 83)

Manet was installed in this last atelier at 77 rue d’Amsterdam in April of 1879. By this time, a progressive illness, later known as syphilis, had begun to manifest itself, and he spent annual extended vacations in the countryside near Paris. He painted numerous flower still-life pieces during this time, and amused himself in addition by writing long letters to friends, which he decorated with charming watercolors.

In 1882, Manet exhibited his last large-scale canvas at the Salon: Bar at the Folies-Bergére. This work comprised the final swan-song of his long-lived fascination with modern Paris and its subjects. Here, the imposing, yet emotionally isolated, figure of a cashier stands over her busy bar station. The mirrored wall behind her reflects the well-populated auditorium in her purview. This work was the last in a series of smaller works on café life completed by the artist.