First Impressions #2 - Answer

Mystery Guest #2 is Edouard Manet 1832-1883. Not my mail-man Jim.

Although Manet never adopted the term Impressionist for himself, he got the whole Impressionism movement rolling. Manet introduced a new era of modern, urban, everyday subject matter which was a real revolution against the sensibilities of 19th Century Paris. Manet was so strikingly different from other painters of his time, and his art so iconoclastic, that guards had to protect his paintings from onlookers and critics. Manet was intensely ridiculed.

The 1863 the Paris Salon rejected Manet's large painting Le Dejeuner Sur l'Herbe, and Manet elected to have it shown at the Salon des Refusés, which had been created from the exceptionally large number of painters whose work had been turned away from the established Salon.

When Olympia was presented at the Paris Salon of 1865, Manet's painting attracted the most attention and created a kind of abusive criticism which was to set a pattern for years to come.

One gallery attendee stated,

"a wretched model picked up from heaven knows where"

Another declared,

"a sort of female gorilla"

Such rejection might have prompted Manet to say,

"The attacks of which I have been the object have broken the spring of life in me... People don't realize what it feels like to be constantly insulted”

Manet was short, handsome (according to my mother), always fashionably dressed and witty. Manet’s biographers stress his kindness and generosity towards his colleagues. One story illustrates Manet's delightful wit. When a pleased collector paid an additional 200 francs for his Bunch of Asparagus, Manet painted a single asparagus spear, and sent it along with a note that read: "There was one missing from your bunch."

Today, I’ll hazard a guess, and say that most people could name or identify at least one work by Edouard Manet, be it: Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe; A Bar at the Folies Bergere, Olympia, the Fifer, or his portrait of Zola. I have an interesting story about the Fifer, but that will have to wait for another day.

Two great books I’ve read that detail Manet’s trials and tribulations at the Paris Salon are Ross King’s, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism, published by Walker & Company, 2006 and Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet by Otto Friedrich, Touchstone, 1993.

1st image of Manet by Fantin-Latour
2nd image of Manet by Degas