Tour: Manet and His Influence

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Overview

When Edouard Manet began to study painting in 1850, Paris' familiar, broad, tree-lined streets did not yet exist, and the life of the city was not a subject artists explored. Young artists could expect to succeed only through the official Academy exhibitions known as Salons, whose conservative juries favored biblical and mythological themes and a polished technique. Within twenty-five years, however, both Paris and painting had new looks. Renovations had opened the wide avenues and parks we know today, and painting was transformed when artists abandoned the transparent glazes and blended brushstrokes of the past and turned their attention to new techniques and to life around them. Contemporary urban subjects and a bold style, which offered paint on the canvas as something to be admired in itself, gave their art a strong, new sense of the present.

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chronology

Captions

1.
1	Edouard Manet, The Old Musician, 1862
2	Edouard Manet, The Dead Toreador, probably 1864
3	Edouard Manet, Still Life with Melon and Peaches, c. 1866
4	Edouard Manet, Oysters, 1862
5	Claude Monet, The Cradle - Camille with the Artist's Son Jean, 1867
6	Edouard Manet, The Tragic Actor (Rouvière as Hamlet), 1866
2.
7	Frédéric Bazille, Young Woman with Peonies, 1870
8	Edouard Manet, Masked Ball at the Opera, 1873