Edouard Manet: A Painter of Modern Life
Always difficult to categorise
An elegant man-about-town, Edouard Manet (1823–83) was above all the painter of contemporary Parisian life. He took his subjects from low life as well as high society, and was never really happy away from the capital.
Of all the great artists of the 19th century, Manet is perhaps the hardest to categorise. He was seen as a revolutionary, but he craved conventional academic success and honours; he was part of the circle of the Impressionists, but he never exhibited with them; he was above all a painter of modern life, but his reverence for the Old Masters was more profound than that of almost any of his contemporaries. Some critics have accused him of a lack of imagination, saying that he could paint only what he saw in front of him, while for others his paintings are among the most complex and subtle of his age.
These contradictions reflect the enormous variety of Manet’s art and his undogmatic approach to everything connected with it. He painted landscapes, everyday scenes, still-lifes, portraits, traditional religious subjects, incidents from modern history and some subjects, such as The Luncheon on the Grass, that defy all categorization. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he rarely repeated favourite themes.
