She looks whimsically at the audience as if she knows they are watching her, while the two men with her carry on an animated conversation. In the background, Manet includes another woman, bent over as if gathering mushrooms from the forest floor clad only in a shift. This painting is very similar in style to the "Music in the Tuileries." Like that painting, Manet does not use really bright colors; instead, they are muted and often dark. He also uses the technique of outlining the characters, which makes them stand out from the forest background, and almost makes them seem to jump off the canvas and away from the background. Another critic notes, "Two hallmarks of Manet's work are the use of frontal lighting and the varying treatment of different figures and elements in the foreground and background -- some precise, some almost sloppily painted" ("Manet's Snapshots"). This painting illustrates those hallmarks extremely well.

The group also forms a classic triangular shape that is used so often in art and photography. The brightest colors, just like the other painting, are in the woman's clothing, which is strewn carelessly beside the group near the picnic supplies. What is so disturbing about this work is the way the woman is the only one without clothing, and she seems to act as if it is extremely natural for her to be dining in the forest with two fully clothed men. Another writer notes, "[T]he Luncheon shows two white women, one large and the other small, in different stages of undress" (Armstrong 152). It is also interesting to note that the women are both in white, which can signify purity, while the men are both wearing black. Clearly, the subject of this painting is the relationships of the flesh between men and women, and how men tend to demote women to places of sexual gratification and little else. These women seem almost like the victims of these men, even though the group seems harmless enough. It is an interesting painting that shows how Manet's work was maturing and taking on new themes, even though he was still painting very real subjects. In fact, the two...

The picnic itself almost resembles a traditional still life, and the men's dress is quite traditional and upper class, as well. There is another aspect to the painting that many critics have noticed about Manet's works in general. He seems to pay special attention to the feet of his subjects, and this work is no exception. Another critic writes, " "Manet, a master of pictorial ambiguity, juxtaposes highly eroticized delicate little feet" (Katz). In this painting, the woman's feet seem a bit large, but Manet takes special care with the details of her feet, especially the dainty toes, juxtaposed with the bare toes of the man sitting next to her, peeking out from his pants leg. The feet play prominent roles, and this is another clue to Manet's realism, he paid as much attention to the small details in this work as he did to the overall composition and purpose of the work.
References

Armstrong, Carol. Manet Manette. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

Bataille, Georges. Manet. Trans. Austryn Wainhouse and James Emmons. New York: Albert Skira, 1955.

Editors. "Music in the Tuileries Gardens." National Gallery. 2008. 23 May 2008. http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=ng3260

Galligan, Gregory. "The Self Pictured: Manet, the Mirror, and the Occupation of Realist Painting." The Art Bulletin 80.1 (1998): 138+.

Hagen, Rose-Marie and Rainer. What Great Paintings Say: V.2. Los Angeles, CA: TASCHEN, 2003.

Katz, Maya Balakirsky. "Photography vs. Caricature: 'Footnotes' on Manet's Zola and Zola's Manet." Nineteenth-Century French Studies 34.3-4 (2006): 323+.

Manet's Snapshots." The Wilson Quarterly Spring 2007: 78+.

Waller, Susan. "Realist Quandaries: Posing Professional and…