Édouard Manet (1832 - 1883)
Related: Impressionism - Realism (arts) - French art - modern art - erotic art - Salon des Refusés
Paintings: Olympia (1865) - Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863)
Olympia 1863 - Edouard Manet (Oil on canvas, 130.5 x 190 cm, Musee d'Orsay, Paris)
Manet's Olympia (painted in 1863, first exhibited in 1865) introduced realism into the visual arts. The painting did not depict a mythological goddess or an odalisque, but a a real woman (a high-class courtesane waiting for a client). Her nakedness is revealed in all its brutality by the harsh light. Manet showed a different aspect of realism from that envisaged by Courbet (which was essentially, social realism). [May 2006]
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe/"The Lunch on the Grass" (1863) - Edouard Manet
In 1863, nudes were acceptable in historical and allegorical paintings, but to show them in common settings was forbidden. The nude in Manet's painting was no nymph, or mythological being ... she was a modern Parisian women cast into a contemporary setting with two clothed man. Many found this to be quite vulgar.
Blonde Woman with Bare Breasts (1878) - Edouard Manet
Edouard Manet's 1882 well-known painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergères depicts a bar-girl, one of the demimondaine, standing before a mirror.
Biography
Édouard Manet (January 23, 1832 - April 30, 1883) was a noted French painter. One of the first nineteenth-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, his works bridged the gap between realism and Impressionism. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edouard_Manet [Jan 2005]
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