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Edouard Manet
(Jan. 23, 1832 Paris - Apr. 30,1883 Paris) French Oil Painting Artist Biography.
Edouard Manet was born in Paris when there was a time when it had no broad, tree-lined streets or when the life of the city did not interest French artists. This was the case in 1850 when Edouard Manet began to study oil painting. But within twenty-five years, both Paris and oil painting had a new look. Urban renovations changed the city as we know it today and oil painting was changed when artists abandoned the past and turned their attention to life around them.
Edouard Manet showed early artistic talent, but he was destined for the Navy until he failed the entrance examinations. He then began to study art with Thomas Couture, whose academic teaching did not satisfy Manet. He began to study the works of the Venetian Renaissance old masters, the Dutch 17th century artists and of the Spaniard Diego Rodriguez Velasquez. He studied these first in Fountainbleau, then in the Louvre and eventually on trips abroad to Holland, Germany, Italy and Spain where in 1865, he discovered Goya.
His earliest works, with clear colors, strong lines and large flat areas, are strikingly similar to Spanish art, particularly in his silhouetted figures which, if cut out, would leave a background in monochrome and a clearly defined outline. From the very beginning of his art career, Manet startled the public. His Luncheon on the Grass (1863) in which a nude woman sits besides two fully dressed men, based on a classical work by Giorgone, virtually created a scandal.
Several artists had begun to challenge the stale conventions of the Academy when Manet's Olympia (1865, Musée d'Orsay, Paris) was accepted for the Salon in 1865. Never had a work of art caused such scandal. Critics advised pregnant women to avoid the painting and it was re-hung to thwart vandals. Viewers were not used to the painting's flat space and shallow volumes. Even more shocking was the frank honesty of his subject, it was her boldness, not her nudity, that offended. Her languid pose copied a Titian Venus. She is not a remote goddess but in the present, easily recognized among the prostitutes and dancehalls girls. In Olympia's steady gaze there is no apology for sensuality and for uncomfortable viewers no escaping her reality. This scandal might seem ridiculous by today's standards, but it marks a turning point in the history of art and in its freedom of expression.
Manet's scandals made him a leader of the avant-garde. In the evenings at the Café Guerbois near his studio, he was joined by writers and other artists, including Claude Oscar Monet who would go on to organize the first Impressionist exhibition. Manet's bold manner with oil paint inspired the future impressionists, though Manet never exhibited with them.
Manet began to develop a freer manner, creating form not through a gradual blending of tones but with discrete areas of color side by side. He drew on the old masters for structure, often incorporating their motifs but giving them a modern twist. The experiments of some of the younger members of the Impressionist School led him to further lighten his palette, although he never experimented with the effects of light and he preferred painting in the art studio to working out in the open air. Unlike the Impressionists, he made considerable use of black, a black that became a living color in his works of art.
Manet died at the young age of 51 of a progressive forms of paralysis after years of suffering and futile treatment. Although his works stem from the traditional techniques of the past, in their freedom of composition, use of color, broad planes and solid construction, they lead toward the future. He brought fresh inspiration and technique to the observation of nature and contemporary life and served both as an influence and as the stimulus for the Impressionists. What is revolutionary in Manet's work is his concern with visual issues over content or storytelling, making him one of the worlds artist.
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