Music in the Tuileries Gardens, 1862.
Oil on canvas, 76.2 × 118.1 cm.
The National Gallery, London.
In 1865 Olympia was shown to the viewing public. And again there was shock and an incredible scandal around the painting. “Insults rain down on me like hailstones,” Manet wrote to Baudelaire, “I’ve never had such a reception.” (Manet, op. cit, p. 181). The black servant confirmed what everyone suspected, namely that this was definitely a prostitute waiting for a client who had brought her a bouquet carefully made by a florist. Unlike Titian’s Vénus d’Urbino, which Manet greatly admired, but which only existed in the closed world of his canvas, Olympia looked out at the viewer unabashedly.
Everything in this painting caused indignation, beginning with the title on the frame. Who was this Olympia? There were wide-ranging interpretations. Olympia was the name of an evil woman in the Tales of Hoffmann, which were very popular in Paris at the time.
In any case, the name given to the painting defied classical tradition. Even Courbet was incapable of understanding Manet’s Olympia. “It’s flat, it has no modelling,” he said. “It looks like the queen of spades from a deck of cards coming out of the bath.” (Manet, op. cit., p. 182).
And just as in Lola, Manet’s seemingly careless impasto technique creates an impression of freshness in the flower bouquet. With the black cat arching its back at the foot of the bed, the painting was perceived by contemporaries as a means to simultaneously mock bourgeois decency, good taste, and the classical rules of art.
In July 1864, when Manet arrived in Boulogne, life threw him the gift of a marvellous subject: in the Channel off Cherbourg a battle was taking place between two American ships, the federal corvette called the “Kearsarge” and the Confederate ship called the “Alabama.” This painting may be considered his first historical painting. We are unaware if Manet witnessed the combat himself. Nevertheless, it was the landscape in this painting, not the dynamics of the battle, that impressed all who saw it. The sea in Manet’s painting is alive. It is a uniform green without any reflections of colour; the impression of waves is solely created by some white touches. Monet was undoubtedly impressed by these seascapes as a French Norman.
Each painting by Manet was a new surprise, due to his unexpected pictorial approach. In 1866 he painted The Fifer. The figure of the fifer, outlined in black, appears to be cut out from the shimmering grey-green background, which represents nothing more than the air. Manet was the first painter to use colour to render surrounding air. The painting has no concrete decoration, landscape, or interior. Only a small strip of shadow extends from the fifer’s feet to show he stands firmly on solid ground. Three flat patches of colour – deep red, black, and white – form the painting’s palette with extreme concision. Only the little boy’s face is handled with delicate pink shades. The concision of Manet’s painting lost none of its meaning for succeeding generations of painters.
The year 1867 was full of significant events in Manet’s life. It was the year of the new Universal Exposition. Courbet opened his own independent pavilion as before. Manet, too, decided to do something rash: with his own means, he built a temporary shelter next to Courbet’s exhibition at the corner of avenues Montaigne and Alma, not far from the Universal Exposition.
Beginning in 1866, when the Salon jury rejected The Fifer, Émile Zola took up Manet’s defence in his review of the Salon. Zola was the first to openly declare his admiration of Manet’s talent, honesty, and desire to create by listening to his own heart. Zola spoke of Manet as a painter who stayed close to nature, placing his confidence solely in the observation of nature, rather than science or experience. Zola considered Manet’s individual exhibition a significant cultural event on par with the exhibition of Courbet, whose genius had already been acknowledged in his lifetime.
27. Édouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1863.
Oil on canvas, 208 × 264.5 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
In 1868, Manet painted the Portrait of Émile Zola (Paris, Musée d’Orsay), expressing in his own way his gratitude for Zola’s support. The cover of Zola’s brochure on Manet is clearly visible amongst papers scattered over a desk and the writer holds an open book in his hands – The History of Painters by Charles Blanc – that could always be found in Manet’s studio. In the reproduction or print of Manet’s Olympia, the model appears to have turned her eyes towards the painter, whereas in the painting she looks straight ahead: yet another expression of the gratitude the painter felt towards the writer.
In June of the same year (1867), Manet finished his history painting entitled, The Execution of Maximilian. The painting reflects his active interest in the life of his times. In 1867 Mexican insurgents executed the archduke Maximilian appointed emperor of Mexico by Napoleon III, along with the generals who remained faithful to him. Many people in France blamed Napoleon for evacuating his troops from Mexico at the very moment the young emperor needed their aid. Manet was deeply moved by the tragedy and for months worked on variations of this painting, which gave new meaning to the term history painting. Manet was interested in the history of his own era, rather than subjects from antique mythology and the Bible, as was the practice at the École des beaux-arts and the Salon. It was no coincidence that his contemporaries were reminded of the Spanish masters when viewing Manet’s Emperor Maximilien, specifically, Goya’s The Execution of 3 May 1808 (Madrid, Museo del Prado). In addition to learning colour from the Spanish painters, Manet also learned how to achieve the emotional tension of Goya’s work.
At first glance, there is an obvious connection between The Balcony and Goya’s Majas on the Balcony. Manet had produced something his viewers were accustomed to by taking his inspiration from Spanish painting once again. He transplanted Goya’s motif to the mid-nineteenth-century Paris. Manet’s elegant figures have lost their romantic appearance and bring the atmosphere of everyday life into the picture – albeit the life of fashionable Paris. At that time, Monet was not painting en plein-air the same way he did in Luncheon on the Grass. He had placed his figures in a contemporary Parisian context. And once again, as in Music in the Tuileries Gardens, the painting has no subject and tells no story. As paradoxical as it may seem, in the eyes of Manet’s contemporaries, the lack of literary content made his work enigmatic. The idea that one could create a painting solely for pictorial reasons (as Manet had done with the Fifer) was foreign to people living in the nineteenth century. Manet was the first nineteenth-century painter to let himself be guided primarily by colour and light when composing his works, which is why he became a model and a master for the future Impressionists.
The Luncheon is in the same vein. It was composed during the summer of 1868 in Boulogne-sur-Mer where Manet was staying with his family. X-ray photography reveals the background initially depicted large studio windows overlooking the sea. Manet eliminated them in the final version, in which the room instead takes on the appearance of a dining room. The background has become darker; now it is the faces and interior details that are becoming exceptionally expressive, thanks to the lighting. A pensive young man leans against a table, his figure cut-off at the knees, giving the viewer the impression that at any moment he might step forward to leave the room and at the same time walk out of the painting. This is the first time Manet directly combines reality with the world in the painting to bring the viewer into the composition he created. A plant in an earthenware pot makes another appearance, in this instance constituting one of Manet’s best still lifes, and was the only aspect of the painting praised by critics of the 1869 Salon. All are painted with such precision in handling and arranged in so harmonious a fashion that Manet may in truth rival the seventeenth-century Dutch masters or Chardin.
28. Édouard
