Édouard Manet: Life, Style, and Iconic Paintings

Manet's Early Life and Artistic Formation

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).

Public Reception and Growing Recognition

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: Style and Significance

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.

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.

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 Proprietary Models in the 1860s." The Art Bulletin 89.2 (2007): 239+.