Édouard Manet (1832-1883), the “reluctant father of Modernism,” was born in Paris
where he studied art from an early age (he was encouraged in his pursuit of painting
by his well-to-do parents as well as an uncle who purportedly often took his young
nephew to the Louvre to view the old masters) and by the mid-1850s had opened a
studio in Paris and began producing paintings that embraced the realism of Gustave
Courbet along with a heavy sprinkling of influence from old masters such as
Velasquez and Goya. He was included in AAPS president Arthur B. Davies’ category
of “Realist” painters and was represented by four paintings in the Armory Show. The
most famous of which,
Bull-Fight
, 1866, is now in the Art Institute of Chicago. Manet’s
works were exhibited across three galleries (O, P and R), which must have dampened
their impact on any viewers who were not already familiar with his work.
While Manet’s legacy in the Armory Show itself may have been underwhelming, the
choice to include him in the exhibition was absolutely necessary. He was, after all, the
first modern artist to truly shake the Parisian art world with his use of confrontational
nudity in the iconic paintings
Dejeuner sur l’herbe
, 1863, and
Olympia
, 1865. These two
paintings, the first showing a pair of fully dressed men and a nude woman at rest in a
landscape and the second presenting a frank depiction of a self-assured Parisian
prostitute, were both scandalous in the 1860s, and foreshadowed the sensational
reaction to the Fauves and Cubists exhibited at the Armory Show five decades later.
Manet was among the first 19th century French artists to pursue an independent and
successful artistic path all the while breaking from classical convention. The added
notoriety of having his
Dejeuner sur l’herbe
displayed in the Salon des Refusés of
1863, an exhibition that was precipitated by the overwhelming rejection of more than
4,000 paintings submitted to the mainstay, more traditional Paris Salon that year,
only increased Manet’s standing among the critics and art cognescenti who
championed his new modernism. However, while Manet continued to pursue his avant-
garde style and subjects and fraternize with the major players involved in
Impressionism, he yearned to be recognized by the Paris Salon and refused to exhibit
with the Impressionists (though he counted the artists Degas, Monet, Renoir, Sisley,
Cézanne and Pissarro among his close friends). Despite his major influence on the
progression towards modern art, Manet remained staunchly anti-revolutionary, stating
he had, “No intention of overthrowing old methods of painting, or creating new
ones.” He was classically trained, looking to Dutch and Spanish old masters for
inspiration, and paintings such as the
Bull-Fight
, exhibited in the Armory Show,
exemplify Manet’s interest in depicting Spanish traditional pastimes—as established
by Goya and Velasquez, and later adapted by Picasso.
Manet produced nearly 90 etchings and lithographs from 1860 to the early 1880s.
The etching of
Le Guitarero
(lot 9), a wonderfully expressive image of a Parisian
street singer in the Spanish style, is loosely based on his same-title painting now in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It was published in a popular Parisian art
journal at the time, furthering Manet’s image among international art circles. The
other three etchings in the catalogue (lots 10-12) are heavily indebted to Goya;
Manet’s
Au Prado
borrows directly from Goya’s
Quien Mas Rendido?
, aquatint and
etching from
Los Caprichos
, circa 1799 (Harris 62), while
Fleur Exotique
sources Goya
imagery from two other etchings in
Los Caprichos
(Harris 40 and 50).
