Edouard Manet Biography

Edouard Manet,famous painter, born January 23, 1832, was the eldest of three sons of Auguste Manet, a distinguished civil servant in the Ministry of Justice, and Eugénie Désirée Fournier, daughter of a diplomatic envoy to the Swedish court. He married Suzanne Leenhoff (1830-1906), a musician and his family's music teacher, in 1863.

Edouard Manet is considered to be the father of impressionism. With the advent of lithograph photography, no longer was painting a necessary element in chronicling reality. A new movement in art began to surface beginning with the work of Edouard Manet. Utilizing the elements of light and without the confines of exact perspective, the impressionist movement created works with vivid brushstrokes and images of everyday subject matters and unique landscapes. Although considered to be the originator of this art category, Manet refused, even till the day of his death, to label his work as impressionistic.

Edouard Manet enrolled in the Parisien atelier of Thomas Couture in September 1850. Although often classified with the Impressionists, it is Manet's position as a Realist which has most relationship to Whistler. His technique is painterly, and in both paintings and prints he introduced modern, urban subject-matter. Like Whistler, he was influenced by the chiaroscuro and drama of Spanish 17th-century painting in his early career, what Whistler called 'la manière noir'; he later evolved to freely-brushed compositions whose content bordered at times on Symbolism. Manet also played an important part in the etching revival, beginning his career as a printmaker about 1860, with one lithographic caricature and a number of etchings. Etching was his favoured medium until the late 1860s, after which he was more interested in lithography.

James McNeill Whistler met Edouard Manet through Fantin-Latour in 1861, and he was part of the artistic milieu of Paris, who Whistler kept in touch with across the Channel. They frequented the Café du Bade with mutual friends like Fantin-Latour, who painted his portrait in 1867, H. Fantin-Latour, Portrait de Manet (FL.296 (z121). Edouard Manet appeared, like James McNeill Whistler, in H. Fantin-Latour, Hommage à Eugène Delacroix (FL.227) (z100), signifying their artistic allegience. Manet was one of those who enthusiastically followed Whistler to Madame Desoye's shop to buy Oriental porcelain, prints and fabrics. Manet was also no stranger to artistic scandal: three of Manet's paintings were rejected from the 81st exhibition, Ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure et lithographie des artists vivants, Palais des Champs Elysées, Paris, 1863, to be hung at Ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, gravure, lithographie et architecture, refusés par le Jury de 1863, et exposés, par décision de S. M. l'Empereur, au salon annexe, Palais des Champs Elysées, Paris, 1863; E. Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe(z334) vied with Symphony in White, No. I: The White Girl (YMSM 38) for notoriety in the press (see Fantin-Latour to JW, 1 May 1863, #01079). As he was not invited to participate in Universal Exhibition, Paris, 1867, Manet took matters into his own hands and set up a private exhibition of 50 of his works in a pavilion close to the exposition grounds. Although this was ignored by the public and press alike, this action aligned him the supreme Realist, Courbet who had exhibited similarly in 1855. After Whistler failed to exhibit anything at the Royal Academy of 1874, he set up his first one-man show, Mr Whistler's Exhibition, Flemish Gallery, Pall Mall, London, 1874. Whistler included works by Manet in Exhibition of International Art, ISSPG, London, 1898. In 1900, Whistler rather irritatedly described Manet to the Pennells as 'always l'écolier - the student with a certain sense of things in paint, and that is all! - he never understood that art is a positive science, one step in it leading to another' (Pennell, 1908, vol. II, p. 261). However, in the 1860s they were close, as Whistler was pleased to receive via Manet, a letter asking about the price of At the Piano (YMSM 24) (E. Thoré to E. Manet, [15 April/May 1867], #00433). Standing before W. P. Frith, Derby Day (z82), Whistler exclaimed 'How did he do it? It's as good as Manet' (Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal, Philadelphia, 1921, p. 78). He died in Paris on April 30, 1883