Édouard Manet | Young Lady in 1866, 1866

Manet’s model, Victorine Meurent, had recently posed as the brazen nudes in Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass (both Musée d’Orsay, Paris).

Here, appearing relatively demure, she flaunts an intimate silk dressing gown.

Critics eyed the painting as a rejoinder to Courbet’s Woman with a Parrot and as indicative of Manet’s "current vice" of failing to "value a head more than a slipper".

Édouard Manet | The Grand Canal, Venice (Blue Venice) 1874

French painter Édouard Manet (1832-1883) visited the Grand Canal Venice in September 1875 with his friend and fellow painter from outside the Impressionist circle James Tissot, who had settled in London after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.

Although the watery splendour of Venice has inspired many great artists, Manet found it hard to settle, but in spite of this he managed to paint one of his most dashingly Impressionist art works.

Edouard Manet | Venice-The Grand Canal (Blue Venice), 1874 | Collections of the Shelburne Museum, Vermont

Édouard Manet (1832-1883)

Édouard Manet nato in una famiglia borghese, dopo gli studi classici si arruolò in Marina. Respinto agli esami, decise di iniziare la carriera artistica. Dal 1850-1856 studiò presso il pittore accademico Couture, pur non condividendone gli insegnamenti.

Viaggiò molto in Italia, Olanda, Germania, Austria, studiando soprattutto i pittori che avevano scelto il linguaggio tonale quali Giorgione, Tiziano, gli olandesi del Seicento, Goya e Velazquez.

Notevole influenza ebbe sulla definizione del suo stile anche la conoscenza delle stampe giapponesi. Nell’arte giapponese, infatti, il problema della simulazione tridimensionale viene quasi sempre ignorato, risolvendo la figurazione solo con la linea di contorno sul piano bidimensionale.

Édouard Manet ed il Realismo

Già negli esordi l'arte di Édouard Manet (1832-1883) apparve indubbiamente connotata da pressanti esigenze realiste, a tal punto che arrivò persino a infuriarsi con il maestro Couture, troppo legato agli accademismi («insomma, vi comportate così quando andate a comprare un mazzo di ravanelli dalla vostra fruttivendola?»).

A turbarlo in particolar modo era in particolare la mancanza di naturalezza delle pose adottate dalle modelle:

«Vedo che ha dipinto una finanziera.

E di eccellente fattura.

Ma dove sono finiti i polmoni della modella?

Sembra che sotto l’abito non respiri.

Come se non avesse un corpo.

È un ritratto da sarto»

Édouard Manet: "I need to work to feel well"

⦁ There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.

⦁ No one can be a painter unless he cares for painting above all else.

⦁ Color is a matter of taste and of sensitivity.

Édouard Manet: "Color is a matter of taste and sensitivity"

• "Color is a matter of taste and sensitivity".

• "Every new painting is like throwing myself into the water without knowing how to swim.".

• "I paint as I feel like painting; to hell with all their studies".

Édouard Manet and Paris

Édouard Manet (1832-1883) depicted many scenes of the streets of Paris in his works.

The Rue Mosnier Decked with Flags depicts red, white, and blue pennants covering buildings on either side of the street; another painting of the same title features a one-legged man walking with crutches.

Again depicting the same street, but this time in a different context, is Rue Mosnier with Pavers, in which men repair the roadway while people and horses move past.

The Railway, widely known as The Gare Saint-Lazare, was painted in 1873.

Édouard Manet e l'Impressionismo

Édouard Manet (1832-1883) viene giustamente inserito nella genealogia dell'Impressionismo.

Egli, infatti, fu l'artefice di una pittura priva di forti variazioni chiaroscurali, e più sensibile al contrasto e alle armonie fra i colori piuttosto che alla definizione dei volumi: queste peculiarità, se da un lato furono accolte molto freddamente da molti, dall'altro giocarono un ruolo fondamentale nell'affermazione della pittura impressionista, animata da artisti come Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Cézanne, Bazille ed altri.

Édouard Manet | Laundry (Le Linge), 1875

'The laundry' was created in 1875 by French Realist/Impressionist painter Édouard Manet (1832-1883).

It is part of the collection of the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.

A woman washes linen in a flower-filled garden.

A child to her right, as if eager to help, tugs at the pail of suds.

Washerwomen were popular figures in 19th-century art and literature.

Manet's good friend Émile Zola, for example, described their tough lives in his novels.

But this depiction is idyllic.

Édouard Manet | Laundry (Le Linge), 1875 | Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Édouard Manet | Café-Concert, 1878

The Café-Concert is an 1879 painting by the French painter Édouard Manet, who often captured café scenes depicting social life at the end of the nineteenth century similar to those depicted in this painting.

The painting is in the collection of the The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

The setting has been identified as the Brasserie Reichshoffen on the Boulevard Rochechouart.

Manet shows us men and women in the new brasseries and cafes of Paris, which presents the viewer with an alternate view of new Parisian life.