The Art of Édouard Manet
A brilliant Parisian artist and forefather of the Impressionists
There are some artists whose work sits easily in the imagination. Claude Monet is one, with his ‘series’ paintings — haystacks, poplars and lily ponds at Giverny. Then there are artists whose body of work is less easy to pin down.
Édouard Manet (1832 — 1883) is one of the latter. With Manet, there is something indefinite hanging in the air. The paint on the canvas seems to be still alive, as if it could glide into new arrangements in front of your eyes.
Moreover, during a professional career of little more than twenty years — he died of syphilis at the age of 51 — there is remarkably little uniformity in his subject matter. Religious and historical works rub up against modern urban scenes. And unlike most other artists, his high-points are scattered throughout his working life, with a painting such as Olympia made at the start of his career, and A Bar at the Folies-Bergère just a year before he died.
Manet is often garlanded with the title ‘the first modernist painter’. In constructing a timeline of art history, it is useful to place him at the juncture that would lead to Impressionism, and Impressionism as the first landmark on the road to modern art. Yet, if Manet is a forefather of the Impressionists, he has a…
