Édouard Manet

Manet is widely regarded as the father of Impressionism, although this can be understood rather as a side effect of his striving to depict life more realistically and to create a sense of movement. Early in his career Manet realised that the viewer cannot possibly take in all the details of a scene at once, but instead sees an image reduced to patches of colour, “impressions”, which the eye interprets and shapes as it jumps between different points. Manet ignored what he knew and painted only what he saw. A perfect example of this is his work The Races at Longchamp (pictured), in which the spectators are reduced to a lively, swirling crowd, while the galloping horses appear as two-legged, blurred patches.

From the page of Music in the Tuileries Gardens

It is important to know that Édouard Manet, reputed to be a rebellious artist, came from an upper-middle-class family. The elegant man of the world always longed for traditional forms of esteem and held that artists should strive to exhibit at the Salon. At the time Luncheon on the Grass was painted, his father died, an elderly civil servant who had opposed his son’s chosen profession. From then on Manet could experiment freely in his paintings without the threat of family criticism or the financial difficulties that then afflicted other artists.

From the page of Luncheon on the Grass

Édouard Manet (1832–1883), a Parisian painter, shocked his contemporaries with Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia. Without ever exhibiting with them, he was a model for the Impressionists.

From the page of Olympia