Main article: Olympia (painting) Life and times Manet's paintings of cafe scenes are observations of social life in nineteenth century Paris. People are depicted drinking beer, listening to music, flirting, reading, or waiting. Many of these paintings were based on sketches executed on the spot. He often visited the Brasserie Reichshoffen on boulevard de Rochechourt, upon which he based
At the Cafe in 1878. Several people are at the bar, and one woman confronts the viewer while others wait to be served. Such depictions represent the painted journal of a
flâneur. These are painted in a style which is loose, referencing
Hals and
Velázquez, yet they capture the mood and feeling of Parisian night life. They are painted snapshots of
bohemianism,
urban working people, as well as some of the
bourgeoisie.
In
Corner of a Cafe Concert, a man smokes while behind him a waitress serves drinks. In
The Beer Drinkers a woman enjoys her beer in the company of a friend. In
The Cafe Concert, shown at right, a sophisticated gentleman sits at a bar while a waitress stands resolutely in the background, sipping her drink. In
The Waitress, a serving woman pauses for a moment behind a seated customer smoking a pipe, while a ballet dancer, with arms extended as she is about to turn, is on stage in the background.
Manet also sat at the restaurant on the
Avenue de Clichy called Pere Lathuille's, which had a garden as well as the dining area. One of the paintings he produced here was,
At Pere Lathuille's, in which a man displays an unrequited interest in a woman dining near him.
In
Le Bon Bock, a large, cheerful, bearded man sits with a pipe in one hand and a glass of
beer in the other, looking straight at the viewer.
Cafe scenes Manet also painted the upper class enjoying more formal social activities. In
Masked ball at the Opera, Manet shows a lively crowd of people enjoying a
party. Men stand with top hats and long black suits while talking to women with masks and costumes. He included portraits of his friends in this picture.
Manet depicted other popular activities in his work. In
Racing at Longchamp, an unusual perspective is employed to underscore the furious energy of racehorses as they rush toward the viewer. In
Skating Manet shows a well dressed woman in the foreground, while others skate behind her. Always there is the sense of active urban life continuing behind the subject, extending outside the frame of the canvas.
In
View of the International Exhibition, soldiers relax, seated and standing, prosperous couples are talking. There is a gardener, a boy with a dog, a woman on horseback—in short, a sample of the classes and ages of the people of Paris.
Paintings of social activities The Prints and Drawings Collection of the
Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest) has a
watercolour/
gouache (
The Barricade) by Manet depicting a summary execution of
Communards by Versailles troops based on a
lithograph of the execution of
Maximilian. The
Execution was one of Manet's largest paintings, and judging by the full-scale preparatory study, one which the painter regarded as most important. Its subject is the execution by Mexican firing squad of a Hapsburg emperor, who had been installed by Napoleon III. As an indictment of formalized slaughter it looks back to
Goya, and anticipates
Picasso's
Guernica.
In January 1871 Manet traveled to
Oloron-Sainte-Marie in the
Pyrenees. In his absence his friends added his name to the "Féderation des artistes" (see:
Courbet) of the
Paris Commune. Manet stayed away from Paris, perhaps, until after the
semaine sanglante. In a letter to
Berthe Morisot at
Cherbourg (June 10,1871) he writes :"
We came back to Paris a few days ago...".(the semaine sanglante ended on
28 May).
On
18 March 1871 he wrote to his (confederate) friend
Félix Bracquemond in Paris about his visit to
Bordeaux, the provisory seat of the French National Assembly of the
Third French Republic where
Emile Zola introduced him to the sites: "
I never imagined that France could be represented by such doddering old fools, not excepting that little twit Thiers..." (some colorful language unsuitable at social events followed,
see "Manet by himself" 1991/2004). If this could be interpreted as support of the Commune a following letter to Bracquemond (
March 21,
1871) expressed his idea more clearly:
"Only party hacks and the ambitious, the Henrys of this world following on the heels of the Milliéres, the grotesque imitators of the Commune of 1793..." He knew the communard Lucien Henry to have been a former painters model and Millière, an insurance agent.
"What an encouragement all these bloodthirsty caperings are for the arts! But there is at least one consolation in our misfortunes: that we're not politicians and have no desire to be elected as deputies". (the letters are published in Julliet Wilson-Bareau ed
"Manet by himself" UK: Times Warner, 2004)
Politics Manet 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 Monsnier 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. The setting is the
urban landscape of Paris in the late nineteenth century. Using his favorite model in his last painting of her, a fellow painter,
Victorine Meurent, also the model for
Olympia and the
Luncheon on the Grass, sits before an iron fence holding a sleeping puppy and an open book in her lap. Next to her is a little girl with her back to the painter, who watches a train pass beneath them.
Instead of choosing the traditional natural view as background for an outdoor scene, Manet opts for the iron grating which "boldly stretches across the canvas" (Gay 106). The only evidence of the train is its white cloud of steam. In the distance, modern apartment buildings are seen. This arrangement compresses the foreground into a narrow focus. The traditional convention of deep space is ignored.
When the painting was first exhibited at the official Paris Salon of 1874: "Visitors and critics found its subject baffling, its composition incoherent, and its execution sketchy.
Caricaturists ridiculed Manet's picture, in which only a few recognized the symbol of modernity that it has become today"(Dervaux 1). The painting is currently displayed at the
National Gallery of Art in
Washington, D.C. Paris He completed painting his last major work,
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère), in
1882 and it hung in the Salon that year.
In
1875, a French edition of
Edgar Allan Poe's
The Raven included lithographs by Manet and translation by Mallarmé.
In
1881, with pressure from his friend
Antonin Proust, the French government awarded Manet the
Légion d'honneur.
Late works In 1863 Manet married Suzanne Leenhoff, a Dutch-born piano teacher of his own age with whom he had been romantically involved for approximately ten years. Leenhoff initially had been employed by Manet's father, Auguste, to teach Manet and his younger brother piano. She also may have been Auguste's mistress. In 1852, Leenhoff gave birth, out of wedlock, to a son, Leon Koella Leenhoff.
After the death of his father in 1862, Manet married Suzanne. Eleven-year-old Leon Leenhoff, whose father may have been either of the Manets, posed often for Manet. Most famously, he is the subject of the
Boy with a Sword in 1861.
Private life Manet died of untreated
syphilis and
rheumatism, which he contracted in his forties. The disease caused him considerable pain and partial paralysis from
locomotor ataxia in the years prior to his death.
His left foot was amputated because of
gangrene, an operation followed eleven days later by his death. He died at the age of fifty-one in Paris in
1883, and is buried in the
Cimetière de Passy in the city.
In
2000, one of his paintings sold for over
$20 million.
Death History of painting Western painting Further reading Flowers in a Crystal Vase Femme au Chapeau a plume grise Baudelaire's Mistress, Reclining
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