Edouard Manet (1832-1883),France impressionism painter, was born in Paris on January 23, 1832, the son of a high government official. To avoid studying law, as his father wished, he went to sea. He then studied in Paris under the academic French painter Thomas Couture and visited Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands to study the paintings of the old masters. The Dutch painter Frans Hals and the Spanish artists Diego Vel¨¢zquez, and Francisco Jose de Goya were the principal influences on his art.
Manet began to paint genre (everyday) subjects, such as old beggars, street urchins, caf¨¦ characters, and Spanish bullfight scenes. He adopted a direct, bold brush technique in his treatment of realistic subject matter. In 1863 his famous Le d¨¦jeuner sur l'herbe (Mus¨¦e d'Orsay, Paris) was shown at the Salon des Refus¨¦s, a new exhibition place opened by Napoleon III following the protests of artists rejected at the official Salon. Manet's canvas, portraying a woodland picnic that included a seated female nude attended by two fully dressed young men, attracted immediate and wide attention, but was bitterly attacked by the critics. Hailed by young painters as their leader, Manet became the central figure in the dispute between the academic and rebellious art factions of his time. In 1864 the official Salon accepted two of his paintings, and in 1865 he exhibited his Olympia (1863, Mus¨¦e d'Orsay), a nude based on a Venus by Titian, which aroused storms of protest in academic circles because of its unorthodox realism.
