How to Read Paintings: Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe by Édouard Manet
A beguiling artwork thought to be the very first modern painting
This painting shows a group of four people gathered together in a wooded grove. They are eating a picnic of fruit and bread among the dappled shade of the park. A small lake in the background has a rowing boat moored to its shore, indicating that this is a place of recreation.
The two men sat in the foreground are fully clothed and in the flow of a conversation. One of them gestures to the other as if enumerating on a point of philosophy or moral principle. They are lounged upon the grass as comfortably as they might be on a chaise longue.
The two women are different. They are not together but occupy different spaces within the picture. The woman in the background is partially clothed and is washing herself in the water. The woman in the foreground is completely unclothed; the blue dress and straw bonnet she was wearing lie next to her in a heap.
If, when you look at this painting, you find its overall feel to be slightly odd, as if the pieces don’t quite fit together, then you would not be alone. The image has an uncertain, discordant atmosphere. One of the reasons for this is the uneven sense of perspective. The woman who bathes in the background is…
