ÉDOUARD MANET

JANUARY 23, 1832 - APRIL 30, 1883

Édouard Manet was a Parisian who painted as if the 19th century were daring itself to look straight at modern life. Born into a respectable bourgeois family, he was expected to follow the law, but the pull of paint and the lure of the studio defeated convention. After early studies and a stubborn rejection from the École des Beaux-Arts, he carved his own path, learning from Velázquez and Goya, yet refusing to bow to their shadows. Manet’s canvases shocked the polite salons. Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe placed a naked woman not in a myth, but on the grass beside clothed men; Olympia stared coolly out at Paris, her gaze unblinking, as critics recoiled. What outraged them was not only subject matter, but the audacity of his brushwork—flat planes, bright light, and the refusal to hide the act of painting itself. Though scorned by institutions, he became a quiet center of gravity for a generation. Impressionists gathered around him; he stood slightly apart, more urban, more classical, but essential. In the cafés of Paris he painted the present tense, even as illness stalked him. When Manet died at fifty-one, he left behind a vision that broke with the past and taught modern art to look without flinching.