Manet
Lesson 2
Édouard Manet ma NAY (1832-1883)
When we like something, we usually like talking about it. What do you like to talk about? Édouard Manet often took the opposite view when he faced the traditions of art in his time. Young artists took notice of Manet’s new ideas and they wanted to talk to him.
People did not expect that the son of a wealthy Parisian family would become an artist. But Manet had become an artist. As a French artist, Manet was expected to show his most impressive paintings at the Salon each year. The Salon was the official art exhibition of the French Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. It was, in its time, the greatest art event of the Western world. Every French artist knew that in order to be known and sell their work, they must get their paintings shown at the Salon. Manet did submit work to the Salon jurors, but sometimes the paintings were rejected. While Salon jurors liked paintings of figures that represented famous characters from long ago, Manet painted people dressed in clothes from his own time. While some of his paintings look very real, just as
the Salon jurors liked to see them, other paintings appeared with loose brush strokes. Despite the Salon jurors’ disapproval, these two innovations were the things that young painters loved. Young painters wanted to paint the people of their own time. They wanted to paint with light brush strokes. They wanted to hear more of Manet’s thoughts on painting. Meeting in a café, Degas, Monet, Renoir, and other young artists would soak up the ideas of Édouard Manet. “There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another,” Manet explained as he pointed to the café chair to prove his point. “But one must surely use lines to make art,” spoke another. Agreement and disagreement with the statement erupted all at once as the artists spoke out. Someone spoke louder than the others, “Perhaps paintings should be color against color, but what would that look like?” So the conversations went. Each heated discussion left the young men eager to try their new ideas on canvases. The next evening the artists would return to the café for more discussions lead by Édouard Manet. This small group of artists became the Impressionists.
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