Manet

With 80 illustrations, including 50 color plates, 7 sketches in red crayon, 8 sketches on blue ground and 15 drawings. 

Edouard Manet was remarkably alert to many of the changing aspects of modern life. Indeed, he was often the first of the artists of his time-the midnineteenth century-to respond to new circumstances and conditions. Manet's paintings were a departure in style, his choice of subject matter sometimes disturbing. 

In fact, Manet was to suffer all his life from a lack of appreciation and from adverse criticism, yet he refused to make any concessions for the sake of popularity. This gentlemanly, reserved artist, something of a dandy, died in 1883 at the age of fifty-one, just when his immense talent was beginning to be recognized. His work is analyzed in this volume by Robert Rey, professor of history of art of the Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux-Arts. 

In Manet's earlier works there is evident, in spite of his genuine originality, a two-fold influence: that of Thomas Couture, whose unruly pupil he had been, and that of the Spanish painters of the seventeenth century, whose work he had seen in museums. A group of his contemporaries, several unknown young painters who were to form the nucleus of the Impressionists, were absorbed in the quality of air and sunlight. On seeing their canvases, Manet began to lighten his own somber palette.

The paintings and drawings reproduced in this book present a fascinating epoch before and after the Franco-Prussian war. Manet's circle in Paris included men like Baudelaire, Zola, Mal-larmé and the Impressionist artists in his atelier at Batignolles and women like Victorine, his model for the nude of « Déjeuner sur l'herbe », « Olympia» (considered the most scandalous painting of the nineteenth century), and « Lady with a Parrot», now at the Metropolitan, as well as Berthe Morisot, an artist herself; Nana, whom Zola was to make famous; the mistress of Baudelaire, Jeanne Duval; Isabelle, to whom Manet wrote many letters illustrated with water-colours and his wife, Susanne, who served as his model in many of his paintings.

For all those who are interested in the paintings of the Impressionists, this is a book which will provide a real understanding of many aspects of an unforgettable era.