Edourd Manet

Йdouard Manet was a French impressionist during the 19th century. His early masterworks The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia engendered great controversy, and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism--today they are considered watershed paintings which mark the genesis of modern art.

While studying with Thomas Couture from 1850 to 1856, he drew at the Acadйmie Suisse and copied the Old Masters at the Musйe du Louvre. After he left Couture's studio, Manet traveled extensively in Europe, visiting Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and Italy. In 1859 he was rejected by the official Paris Salon, although Eugиne Delacroix intervened on his behalf. In 1861 Manet's paintings were accepted by the Salon and received favorable press, and he began exhibiting at the Galerie Martinet in Paris. During the early 1860s his friendships with Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Degas began. The three paintings Manet sent to the Salon of 1863, including Le Dйjeuner sur l'herbe, were relegated to the Salon des Refusйs, where they attracted the attention of the critic Thйophile Thorй.

In 1865 Manet's Olympia and Christ Mocked were greeted with great hostility when shown at the Salon. That year the painter traveled to Spain, where he met Thйodore Duret. He became a friend of Emile Zola in 1866, when the writer defended him in a controversial article for the periodical L'Evиnement. In 1867 Zola published a longer article on Manet, who that year exhibited his work in an independent pavilion at the Paris World's Fair. The artist spent the first of several summers in Boulogne at this time. In 1868 two of his works were accepted by the Salon but were not shown to advantage.

The dealer Paul Durand-Ruel began buying his work in 1872. That same year The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama was shown at the Salon, and Manet traveled to the Netherlands for the second time. The poet Stйphane Mallarmй, who met the artist in 1873, wrote articles about him in 1874 and 1876 and remained a close lifelong friend. Manet declined to show with the Impressionists in their first exhibition in 1874. That summer he worked at Gennevilliers and Argenteuil with Claude Monet and the following year he visited Venice. In 1876 he exhibited Olympia and two paintings rejected that year by the Salon at his own studio. From 1879 to 1882 Manet participated annually at the Salon.