Impressionism. Nathalia Brodskaya

constantly copied the old masters and demonstrated a wide variety of interests at the same time he was training in Couture’s studio. During trips to European cities he copied paintings in museums, including Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and probably the museums of Kassel, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Munich, Florence, and Rome. He was very interested in the nude, in his own words, “the first and last word in art.” The Louvre was also where Manet often made new acquaintances. It was there that in 1857 he met Henri Fantin-Latour and few years later Degas.

      Manet also had a role model among his living contemporaries: Eugène Delacroix. When critics attacked Manet’s painting Music in the Tuileries Gardens, Delacroix said that he regretted “being unable to come to this man’s defence.” (Manet, op. cit., p. 126). The year was 1863, shortly before Delacroix’s death and during Manet’s exhibit at the Martinet gallery. Manet attended Delacroix’s funeral with Charles Baudelaire. The loss of Delacroix coincided with the advent of Manet’s art before the public. Manet had yet to visit Spain; his awareness of Spanish painting was limited to the Louvre’s collection and to reproductions. Nevertheless, the young Parisian painter had discovered in the work of seventeenth-century Spanish masters the colour quality he was seeking in his own painting.

      22. Édouard Manet, Portrait of Théodore Duret, 1868.

      Oil on canvas, 46.5 × 35.5 cm.

      Petit Palais – Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris.

      23. Édouard Manet, The Absinthe Drinker, c.1859.

      Oil on canvas, 180.5 × 105.6 cm.

      Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.

      24. Édouard Manet, Monsieur and Madame Auguste Manet, 1860.

      Oil on canvas, 110 × 90 cm.

      Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

      Victorine Louise Meurent, Manet’s favourite model, played a special role in his painting during the 1860s. The painter met the young Russian girl with milky white skin somewhere in a Parisian crowd, perhaps in rue Maître Albert where she lived, not far from Manet’s studio. She posed for Manet on numerous occasions after The Street Singer, including the marvellous painting entitled, Miss Victorine Meurent in the Costume of an Espada (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), which Manet exhibited a little later. Manet actually retained the name of his model in the title of this highly eccentric composition. Although there was absolutely nothing Spanish about the subject, the painting had the atmosphere of Spain, which the painter had never actually seen. Manet was criticised for the clash between the bullfight scene in the background and the figure of Victorine; his inability to establish proportions; and even for his drawing and painting skills.

      Among the paintings exhibited at the Martinet gallery, Lola de Valence (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) was unquestionably the most Spanish. On the surface of Lola’s skirt, which he painted in broad black strokes, Manet seemed to have carelessly thrown small bits of red, green, and yellow impasto. It represented an unprecedented freedom, even compared to Courbet’s palette painting. Courbet’s name automatically came to mind at the Martinet exhibition. Manet was definitely walking in Courbet’s footsteps with his composition entitled, Music in the Tuileries Gardens (London, The National Gallery). Nevertheless, Manet had more spontaneity; he did not elaborate the setting, but seemed to capture a slice of life as it unfolded around him.

      To the future Impressionists, Manet’s colour and style of painting were a revelation, even if in principle they contrasted with their own investigations. At this stage, Manet was oblivious to plein-air painting and the direct observation of colour in nature held no interest for him. The coloration of Manet’s “Spanish” paintings was acquired from the museums. He had intensified his colour and made his brushwork more expressive than that of the old masters. Moreover, Manet had actually invented the colour that his admirers, the future impressionists, were trying to find in living nature.

      Two months after the Martinet gallery show, Paris got a new surprise. On 1 May, 1863, for the first time in the history of French art, two parallel exhibitions opened simultaneously: the traditional Salon and the Salon des Refusés. Napoleon III had come to personally tour the exhibition rooms shortly before their opening. Astonished by the jury’s strictness, he ordered all the rejected paintings be exhibited. Manet, in the most remote room, burned a hole in the wall with his Luncheon on the Grass” (A. Tabarant, Manet. Histoire catalographique, Paris, 1931, p. 95). In his landscape, Manet had broken the tradition of following the classical rules of constructing aerial perspective. Manet’s foreground is bright green, rather than a warm, yellow-brown; and Manet’s background shines with yellow sunlight, rather than fading into blue-green. In the middle ground, a half-dressed woman splashes around in pure blue water. In the foreground, the artist paints a still life, whose bright blue shadows and yellow and cherry-red colours compete with the tonalities of the figures. Broad strokes of colour applied with apparent carelessness give the impression of a sketch made a la prima. In fact, Manet was still using a multi-layered pictorial technique, as he was taught by Couture, a top painting instructor. X-ray photographs of Manet’s paintings show a classic under layer of lead white, upon which (once it had dried) layers of colour were superimposed. The end result was nevertheless inconsistent with traditional values; it moreover seemed impossible for such a painting to have been executed out of doors.

      25. Édouard Manet, Portrait of Victorine Meurent, c.1862.

      Oil on canvas, 42.9 × 43.8 cm.

      Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

      26. Édouard Manet, 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.

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