This paper examines the life and artistic career of Édouard Manet, tracing his development from a reluctant naval apprentice to one of the most influential painters of nineteenth-century France. It surveys the public hostility and critical ridicule his work initially provoked, his gradual commercial and critical success, and his close associations with artists who would form the Impressionist movement. The paper then provides close readings of two signature works — "Music in the Tuileries" (1860–1861) and "The Luncheon on the Grass" (1863) — analyzing their composition, brushwork, thematic content, and the controversies they sparked, situating both paintings within the broader shift from Academic Realism toward Impressionism.
The paper demonstrates the use of multiple secondary sources in dialogue with one another. Rather than relying on a single authority, the writer draws on a biographer (Bataille), art historians (Galligan, Armstrong), and period critics (Zola) to build a layered argument about how Manet's work was received and why it mattered. This multi-source synthesis is a foundational skill in art history writing.
The paper opens with a biographical overview, moves to a thematic discussion of Manet's reception and commercial trajectory, and then pivots to two sustained formal analyses of specific paintings. Each painting section follows the same pattern: description of subject matter, formal analysis of technique, and contextual interpretation of meaning and controversy. The conclusion of each section links the individual work back to the broader arc of Impressionism.
Édouard Manet was born on January 23, 1832, in Paris. His father was the head of a department of the French government, and his mother was the goddaughter of the King of Sweden. Manet studied at the Collège Rollin in Paris and, encouraged by his uncle, knew from a very young age that he wanted to be an artist. His father, however, wanted him to become a lawyer — a profession for which Manet had no aptitude. His father forced him to join the Navy, and he spent eight months at sea as an apprentice, but failed the naval entrance examination twice. His father finally relented, and Manet began to study art aggressively. He studied for about two years with the successful painter Thomas Couture, then struck out on his own alongside fellow artist and friend Count Albert de Balleroy. He also traveled extensively throughout Europe during this period, studying art in various museums (Bataille 3).
Manet's first notable artwork was "Boy with Cherries," a disturbing portrait of a young boy hired to clean his palettes and brushes in the studio. The boy later hanged himself in the studio, and Manet moved away from that troubled space, leasing another studio elsewhere in Paris. His first paintings exhibited at the Salon in 1861 earned him critical praise, and he began to gain wider recognition throughout the Parisian art scene. As he became better known, he kept company with other artists living and working in Paris, including "Antonin Proust, Fantin-Latour, Frédéric Bazille, James McNeill Whistler, Armand Silvestre, Renoir (from 1868 on), and occasionally Degas, Monet, Cézanne and Henner" (Bataille 9). In time, many of these artists would develop their own distinct styles, eventually contributing to the Impressionist movement in which nearly all of them would participate (Bataille 8–9).
The public did not accept the Impressionists — and especially Manet — at first. The critic Émile Zola wrote of Manet: "Our fathers laughed at Monsieur Courbet, and today we go into ecstasies over him. We laugh at Monsieur Manet; it will be our sons who go into ecstasies over his canvases" (Bataille 10). When Zola praised Manet again in print, he was dismissed from his position as an art critic (Bataille 10), which illustrates how strongly the public rejected Manet's paintings at the time. Many viewers found them laughable, and many critics refused to accept them for hanging in the Salon, the premier annual art exhibition held in Paris.
In 1867, Manet paid out of his own pocket to exhibit his works at the Paris World's Fair, and public ridicule was the result. A Manet biographer records: "Feeling it was too fine an opportunity to pass up, they came to treat themselves and their families to a good laugh. Every self-respecting painter in Paris turned up at the Manet Exhibition. They all went wild with laughter... All the papers without exception followed their lead" (Bataille 10). Manet, however, had the last laugh: by 1871, he was charging between 5,000 and 25,000 francs per painting, and they were selling quite well (Bataille 11). By the 1870s, Manet had adopted the Impressionist manner of painting almost wholeheartedly, and his works grew increasingly popular with the public and, above all, with critics.
Early in his career he painted realistic works that often depicted religious subjects, but as he matured, he adopted the Impressionistic style, and it suited his approach very well. He frequently painted scenes witnessed during his travels, and he also liked to paint himself, his family, and his friends. One critic observed: "At any exhibition, even from many rooms away, there is only one painting that stands out from all the rest: it's a Manet every time. One is apt to laugh, for the effect is queer when a single thing differs from all the others" (Bataille 17). After his death, his work came to be far more widely accepted and sought after.
Manet suffered from locomotor ataxia later in his life, and by 1883 he was bedridden and had lost the use of his legs. One of his legs was amputated just ten days before his death on April 30, 1883. He was only 51 years old; had he lived longer, he would certainly have produced a great many additional works.
Music in the Tuileries (also known as Concert at the Tuileries) is one of Manet's first well-known works. He painted it in 1860–1861, and it depicts a group of concertgoers listening to an outdoor concert in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. Manet loved to paint people enjoying their leisure time, and this painting epitomizes that theme. The oil on canvas seemed unfinished to many viewers in 1861, and it helped spark the public derision of Manet's works that persisted for some years. Author Bataille writes: "[V]isitors took particular offense at Concert at the Tuileries. 'One exasperated art-lover,' Zola later said, 'went so far as to threaten to take matters into his own hands if Concert at the Tuileries were not promptly removed from the gallery'" (Bataille 70).
The painting depicts a large group of people sitting and standing throughout the gardens, enjoying the music and the day. Children play, women gossip and fan themselves, and Manet placed several friends, family members, and himself among the crowd. The forest background is dark but not forbidding, and the women's costumes are bright and cheerful against that dark backdrop. It is difficult today to understand why people were so offended by the painting, as it now appears peaceful and serene — not at all controversial or unlikable.
Today, the painting hangs in the National Gallery in London, along with several other works by Manet. Its colors remain vibrant, and his early style demonstrates why Impressionism suited him so well. He stated that he wanted his works to "show the contemporary scene its epic side and shows us, through line and color, how great and poetic we are in our cravats and patent-leather boots" (Bataille 31). He returned to this theme repeatedly, and this painting truly encapsulates what he sought to achieve: an unusual style so distinctive that it drew criticism. The brushstrokes at times appear heavy and somewhat rough, and the dark forest feels a little weighty for such a lighthearted subject, but the details — the wire chairs in the foreground, the women's costumes, their hats, and the decorations on their clothing — are exceptionally delicate.
The painting is also an excellent depiction of Parisian society at the time. The richly dressed figures are clearly upper class; they have leisure time and enjoy the arts. Manet's painting is one of the first modern representations of real people engaged in real activities (Rainer and Rainer 370), which is one reason viewers found it controversial, and it marks a decisive step toward the Impressionist movement that would follow the Realist movement. Another writer observes: "[We might rethink Manet's achievement as a certain 'raising the stakes' of a long tradition — doubtless as much as that achievement may continue to be discussed, in other regards, as a departure from precedent]" (Galligan 140). Manet's work was certainly a departure from precedent, and the circle of artists he knew and associated with all supported that break. They collectively championed a new, lighter style of realist painting that would evolve into Impressionism, and with this work Manet opened up a new world for many of the most prominent artists of his era.
The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) is probably Manet's most well-known and controversial painting. The principal model was a professional, "Victorine Meurent, who posed for Le déjeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia" (Waller) — an arrangement Manet moved away from as he gained notoriety, since he disliked professional models and much preferred using natural, non-professional subjects, who seemed more genuine and lifelike to him (Waller). This oil on canvas was painted around 1863. It portrays a group enjoying a picnic in a dark forest, and it is unsettling because all the figures are clothed except for the central character — a large, naked woman positioned directly at the center of the composition. She gazes whimsically at the viewer as if aware of being watched, while the two men beside 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 shares many stylistic qualities with Music in the Tuileries. Like that work, it eschews vivid color in favor of muted, often dark tones. Manet also employs the technique of outlining his figures, which causes them to stand apart from the forest background and almost appear to leap off the canvas. One 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 particularly well.
The group also forms a classic triangular composition used so frequently in art and photography. The brightest colors, as in the earlier painting, appear in the woman's clothing, which is strewn carelessly beside the group near the picnic supplies. What is most unsettling about the work is the way the woman alone is without clothing, and yet she behaves as though it is perfectly natural to be dining in the forest alongside two fully clothed men. As one 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 notable that both women are dressed — or partly dressed — in white, which can signify purity, while both men wear black. The subject of the painting clearly engages with the relationships of the flesh between men and women, and with the tendency to reduce women to objects of sexual gratification. These women seem almost like victims, even though the scene appears harmless enough on the surface. The work demonstrates how Manet's painting was maturing and taking on new thematic concerns, even as he continued to paint from direct observation. The two men posing in the scene were, in fact, his relatives, whom he frequently used as subjects.
Even as Manet moved away from "proper" art by academic definition, he incorporated certain elements of it into this work. The picnic itself almost resembles a traditional still life, and the men's dress is quite conventional and upper class. There is another recurring quality that critics have observed in Manet's paintings generally: a marked attention to the feet of his subjects, and this work is no exception. One critic writes: "Manet, a master of pictorial ambiguity, juxtaposes highly eroticized delicate little feet" (Katz). In this painting the woman's feet appear somewhat large, but Manet takes particular care with their details — especially the dainty toes — set against the bare toes of the man seated beside her, just visible beneath his trouser leg. The feet play prominent roles in the composition, and this is yet another indication of Manet's realism: he paid as much attention to small details as he did to the overall composition and purpose of the work.
At the time, the public wanted "high" art depicting religious subjects or other elevated occasions, rather than this very real and public type of imagery — which is one reason so many people found it offensive (Rainer and Rainer 370). This painting, with its seemingly crude brushstrokes and commonplace subject matter, therefore offended many viewers. As the Rainers note, "According to academic rules, objects from daily life had no place in a 'proper' work of art — such things were 'vulgar'" (Rainer and Rainer 372). Manet broke those rules, as did many of his contemporaries, which made their works difficult to sell at the time.
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