Manet and Modern Paris

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) was the initiator and leader of a new kind of painting whose modernity was defined both by technical boldness and the choice of subject. He frequently made reference to models of the past, especially to Italian and Spanish painting, which he succeeded in “updating” in a subtle yet provocative way. The paintings he sent each year to the official exhibition in Paris – the Salon – were regularly rejected by the jury because of their radical treatment. With the support of his literary and artist friends, Manet continued resolutely along the unusual path he had chosen and revisited all the traditional painting genres (portrait, landscape, still life...). An astute and passionate observer of Paris, his native city, which at that time was undergoing considerable change, he epitomised the “painter of modern life” called for by the poet Charles Baudelaire, revealing the poetry and all that was “marvellous” in this urban environment: in the cafés, cabarets, the Opera and even in the perfumed wake of elegant and mysterious women. His free, virtuoso brushwork, his broad, flat areas of colour and his love of contemporary subjects made him one of the artists most admired by the Impressionists, a group with whom he nonetheless refused to exhibit.