Paintings by Manet "Breakfast on the Grass" and "Olimpia" - stars of the Salon of the Outcasts

His fate is full of contradictions. Pictures of Manet defied bourgeois morality, and he himself came from a wealthy wealthy family, and his father's opinion was very important to him. He copied the masterpieces of the old masters in the Louvre for a long time and was eager to exhibit in the official Salon, and his works were shocked by unusual subjects and free picturesque manner.

Biography. Rapid start

Edouard Manet was born in Paris in 1832. Father - a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Justice, the mother - the daughter of a prominent diplomat. He was given all the opportunities to get an education and started a solid career. But studying in prestigious boarding schools and colleges is not for him. Fifteen-year-old Edward tries to enter the nautical school, fails and goes swimming with a cabin boy to try for the next year. During the voyage, he draws a lot, since then the paintings of Manet often contain marine motifs.

He repeatedly fails the exams. The father sees the work of his son and resigns himself to the fact that he will not be an official or a prosperous bourgeois. Edward becomes a pupil of the well-known master of the academic direction of Tom Couture, studies picturesque classical masterpieces in different cities of Europe, spends a lot of time in the Louvre. But the style of the first significant works of Manet is not similar to the traditional one.

First exhibitions

Exhibited in the Paris Salon of Painting - means getting professional recognition. It is visited by up to half a million spectators. The work selected by the commission, which is specially appointed by the government, guarantees the artist fame, and, consequently, orders and incomes.

Painting Manet "Absinthe Lover" (1858-59 gg.) Was rejected by the jury of the Salon, the realistic theme was too unaccustomed, the artist was too unconcerned with the prospect and half-tones - sacred concepts for the academic school.

But in 1861, at once two paintings of Manet - "Portrait of the parents" and "Gitarero" are exhibited in the Salon. Recognition of specialists and art lovers was especially important for the artist's father.

Breakfast on the Grass

For the Salon of 1863 Manet wrote an amazing picture. The composition and the plot were inspired by Raphael's "Court of Paris" and Giorgione's "Village Concerto." First, the artist called the canvas "Bathing", but then it became known as "Breakfast on the grass". Painting Manet was an event.

The canvas is quite large, which presumed for those times the use of a battle or multi-figure biblical story. And we see a picnic scene of two men and two women, one of whom, in the background, is bathing in the lake. Men, dressed in evening suits, are carried away by the conversation among themselves, and as if they do not notice the naked woman beside her. Her clothes are carelessly thrown on the grass, the body is dazzling under the bright front light, and there's nowhere to escape from her defiant glance directed at the viewer.

Every spectator saw his "Breakfast on the grass". Painting Manet is mysterious. The surrounding landscape is painted without perspective and shadows, like the scenery in the provincial theater. The bather is clearly not on a scale with the environment. The bird, frozen above the seated, like a target in a dash, looks like a bullfinch, but a bullfinch in the summer? Obviously, there is a story, but the artist does not try to explain it, leaving the viewer to imagine his own.

Characters of an outrageous picnic had a portrait resemblance to specific people from the artist's surroundings: his brother Gustav and brother-in-law Ferdinand Leinhof. The female model also had a name - Quiz Meran, and the specific glory that the frog hinted in the lower left corner of the picture is a symbol of voluptuousness. The scandal was grandiose.

Salon of the outcasts

The jury of the Salon of 1863 was as strict as ever. Pictures of Manet rejected. Of the five thousand works submitted, less than half were selected, and the artists complained to the emperor himself. Napoleon III, who was in power at the time, personally inspected the rejected paintings and found no big difference with the accepted ones. He recommended setting up an alternative exhibition. The audience of outcasts visited as many spectators as the official.

Painting Manet became a sensation. She was admired, but the majority - they scolded her, laughed at her, she was parodied, there were not only indifferent people. This was repeated in 1865 with another masterpiece of Manet.

"Olympia"

Again the master was inspired by a masterpiece of the past. This time it was Titian's "Venus of Urbino". In Venus, Manet is the body of Quiz Meran, far from the ancient proportions. It was she who made the visitors of the Salon - faithful spouses and respectable ascetics indignant. It was necessary to put the policeman, that he protected a cloth from nyxes of umbrellas and spittles.

Venus was called: Olympia. The painting of Manet evoked from contemporaries direct associations with the courtesan of Dumas's novel "The Lady with the Camellias." Only those who did not think about the moral foundations could immediately appreciate the master's magnificent painting skills, the expressiveness of the composition, the exquisite palette.

Mane-impressionist

Around the artist gradually formed the society of those who become the personification of the brightest artistic trend in painting - Impressionism. Edward Manet is an artist whose paintings were not exhibited at exhibitions with Degas, Renoir, Cezanne. He considered himself independent of any unions and associations, but he was friends and worked together with Claude Monet and other representatives of the style.

And most importantly, he shared their views on painting, when the main thing for the artist is the ability to see and express the subtle nuances in nature and in man.