Édouard Manet (1832-1883), French painter and printmaker, whose work inspired the Impressionist style, but who refused to identify his own work with Impressionism. His originality lay in his choice of subjects from the modern world and in his bold, vigorous brushwork qualities that made him an inspiration to the Impressionists.

Manet was born in Paris on January 23, 1832, the son of a senior official in the Ministry of Justice. To avoid studying law, as his father wished, he went to sea. Eventually, Manet overcame his father’s opposition to his becoming an artist and from 1850 to 1856 he studied in Paris under Thomas Couture, a well-respected academic painter. However, his real artistic education was gained through studying the work of the Old Masters in the Louvre and on extensive travels he made to visit some of the great galleries of Europe. The works of Frans Hals, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco de Goya were the principal influences on his art. It is ironic that, although he was often attacked for the modernity of his ideas, few artists of his time showed such dedication to the great art of the past.

When his father died in 1862, Manet came into a substantial inheritance, allowing him to pursue his own artistic inclinations without needing to sell his work to earn a living. By this time he had experienced some minor professional successes and setbacks, but the following year he became infamous when he was at the centre of one of the most dramatic events in 19th-century art. This was the launch of the Salon des Refusés, a new exhibition space set up by Napoleon III following the protests of artists who had been rejected by the official state Salon. Many visitors came to mock the pictures on display, and Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (1863, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), 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. The depicting of nudity in a contemporary setting was considered immoral, nudity in art being found acceptable only if it were suitably distanced from real life, by being placed in a mythological context, for example. Worse came two years later, when Manet’s Olympia (1863, Musée d’Orsay) was accepted by the 1865 Salon. This, too, showed a female nude. The pose was based on the famous Venus of Urbino by Titian (which Manet had seen and copied in Florence), but the woman whom Manet depicted was clearly a modern Parisian, not a Renaissance interpretation of a goddess; her overt sexuality and direct gaze, and the unorthodox realism with which she was depicted, was out of step with contemporary taste, and many people considered the painting an affront to morality. Manet was also condemned for the unconventional nature of his technique, in which he used bold contrasts of tone rather than painstaking detail. To traditionalists, this was merely sloppy and lazy. Manet wrote to his friend Charles Baudelaire, “Insults are pouring down on me thick as hail”, and he went to Spain for a while to escape the abuse.

Manet now found himself a hero to artists who were trying to break away from outmoded conventions, his work being particularly admired by the painters who later became known as Impressionists. In 1866 the novelist Émile Zola, who championed the art of Manet in the newspaper L’Événement, became a close friend of the painter; Portrait of Émile Zola (1867-1878, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) reflects this friendship. Zola was soon joined by the young group of French Impressionist painters that included Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Cézanne, who were influenced by Manet and who, in turn, influenced him, particularly in the use of lighter colours and an emphasis on the effects of light. Although he never exhibited at their group shows, Manet socialized with the Impressionists, and during the 1870s his work became lighter and freer, in line with their style; an example of this departure is Street Pavers in the Rue Mosnier (1878, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). He even sometimes adopted their habit of painting out of doors, encouraged particularly by Berthe Morisot, the outstanding woman painter of the group, who married Manet’s brother in 1874.

In the late 1870s Manet started to suffer bouts of pain and fatigue, evidently caused by syphilis affecting his central nervous system. Often he was too weak to use oils, so he increasingly worked in pastel (or crayon). However, his final major work, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London), is unsurpassed in 19th-century art for sheer richness and beauty of technique. His last pictures of all included some superb flower pieces—small, simple, but painted with luscious breadth. He died in agony on April 30, 1883, ten days after having a leg amputated. He was 51.

Manet was one of the most influential artists of the 19th century. However, coming from a highly respectable social background, his intention was not to be an artistic rebel, insisting that he was not trying to overthrow traditional ideas. Throughout his career he sought conventional success and honours in the art world. Two years before his death he was made a member of the Légion d’Honneur, but this distinction—the kind of award he had long craved—came too late to be enjoyed.