\paperw5190 \margr0\margl0 \plain \f1 French painter. \par
Born into a wealthy middle-class family, he pursued classical studies at Rollin College in Paris, where he formed a fr
iendship with the future writer Antonin Proust, who has provided us with invaluable information about his life and activity in \i Souvenirs\i0 . At the age of sixteen he abandoned his studies to enroll as an officer in the navy, but failed the admission
exams. He then took a post as an apprentice navigation officer on a merchant ship sailing for Rio de Janeiro. During the voyage he started to draw, making caricatures of members of the crew. After another attempt to enter the Ecole Navale met with reject
ion, he persuaded his father to let him study art. In 1850 he entered the studio of the academic painter Thomas Couture, where he stayed for six years in spite of violent disagreements with his teacher. Convinced that the renewal of painting could only t
ake place within tradition, he studied the works of the old masters in the Louvre and made numerous journeys to the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and Italy between 1852 and 1856. He took a particular interest in artists like Giorgione, Titian, and the s
eventeenth-century Dutch painters, who made color the center of their pictorial research. A fundamental role in his formation was played by great Spanish painters like Francisco JosΘ de Goya y Lucientes and Diego Velßzquez. Manet was able to study their
work more closely on his visit to Spain in 1865. His first important works depict scenes of Parisian life, inspired in part by his friend, the writer Charles Baudelaire (\i The Absinthe Drinker\i0 , 1858, Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glypotek\i ; Music at th
e Tuileries\i0 , 1860, London, National Gallery). The \i Absinthe Drinker\i0 was rejected at the Paris Salon of 1859, despite the favorable opinion of EugΦne Delacroix. Two years later he obtained one of the very few tokens of official recognition of hi
s career with the \i Spanish Guitar Player\i0 (New York, Metropolitan Museum). After a series of pictures of a company of Spanish dancers in 1862, Manet painted two of his most celebrated works in 1863. The \i DΘjeuner sur lÆHerbe\i0 and \i Olympia\i0
(Paris, MusΘe dÆOrsay) were destined to become a fundamental point of reference for Impressionist and post-Impressionist painting. The two paintings caused one of the biggest scandals in the history of modern art, due to both their subjects and the anti
-academic style in which they were painted. Manet did away with volumes, perspective, chiaroscuro, and sfumato, and laid on the paint in a flat way, within well-defined outlines, setting dark and light tones alongside one another so as to create bold con
trasts of color. The absence of spatial depth derives from his study of Japanese prints, while the range of colors and some elements of the composition can be traced to the influence of Spanish painting. Over the following years, Manet painted a series o
f still lifes and, after his trip to Spain in 1865, produced works inspired by the painting of Goya and Velßzquez, such as \i The Fifer\i0 (1866, Paris, MusΘe dÆOrsay), various versions of the \i Execution of Maximilian \i0 (1867, the most interesting b
eing in Mannheim, Kunsthalle), the \i Luncheon in the Studio\i0 (1868, Munich, Bayerische Staatsgalerie), and the \i Balcony\i0 (1868, Paris, MusΘe dÆOrsay). From 1863 onward he took part in the meetings of young painters at the CafΘ Guerbois and CafΘ
de la Nouvelle AthΦnes that would give rise to the Impressionist group. Despite his brief adherence to Impressionism, testified by works like \i Boating\i0 (1874, New York, Metropolitan Museum) and \i The Artist and his Wife\i0 (1874, Munich, Neue Pina
kothek), Manet deliberately kept out of the group, refusing to take part in joint exhibitions. Unlike the young Impressionist painters, he preferred figures to landscape and used colors and harmonies that did not follow the rules of complementarity prope
r to Impressionist painting. His principal interlocutors remained his friends Baudelaire, Zola, and MallarmΘ, writers who inspired him to paint a series of works with naturalistic settings such as \i The Bar at the Folies BergΦres\i0 (1882, London, Cour
tauld Institute Galleries) and \i Nana\i0 (1877, Hamburg, Kunsthalle), which shortly preceded the publication of the novel of the same name by Zola. Throughout his long career Manet painted portraits of friends or acquaintances, always depicting his sub
jects with immediacy and rare psychological insight (\i Portrait of Emile Zola\i0 , 1867-68, Paris, MusΘe dÆOrsay).
