The Rebel who Challenged the Critics

Despite his father’s wishes for him to pursue a different profession, Édouard Manet insisted on becoming an artist. His father eventually surrendered to Manet’s passion. Édouard Manet went on to become a member of The Batignolles, the impressionist artists who gathered at the Café Guerbois, located on Batignolles Road in Paris. Despite his association with others in the group, Manet pursued his own artistic style by using black instead of pastel paints.

Without formal art academic education, Manet frequented Paris’ most famous museum, The Louvre to absorb and sketch artworks of the Renaissance by artists such as Titian and Raphael who had mastered painting the female form. In his paintings, Manet was portrayed nude woman with well-dressed bourgeois men. He was criticised for distorting the style of the masters and presenting a subject at the time deemed improper.

‘Le Déjeuner sur L’herbe’ (Luncheon on the Grass 1863) was submitted to Paris Salon’s committee, responsible for selecting artwork for the annual exhibition. It was rejected outright like many other artists. As a result of this resistance, Manet joined others in The Batignolles to mount an exhibition of their own, calling it ‘Salon of the Refused’.

Manet continued on his own artistic direction. His ‘Olympia’ completed in the same year was on shown at ‘Salon of the Refused’ in 1865. It depicted a nude woman in a reclining pose. The woman, Jeanne Duval was a mistress of the famous poet Baudelaire. Behind her in the painting, a black female servant with a bouquet from Baudelaire.

Like other greatest artists who paved a new way to modern art, Manet’s audaciousness ensured his position in art history.

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