“CE QUI ME FRAPPE D’ABORD DANS CES TABLEAUX, C’EST
UNE JUSTESSE TRÈS DÉLICATE DANS LES RAPPORTS DES
TOUS ENTRE EUX.
“TOUTE LA PERSONNALITÉ DE L’ARTISTE CONSISTE DANS LA
MANIÈRE DONT SON ŒIL EST ORGANISÉ: IL VOIT BLOND, ET
IL VOIT PAR MASSES”
_ZOLA_
FOR over twenty years the technique and methods of Edouard Manet were a
subject for the most virulent debate. His art, in fact, became the scene
of a battle in which every painter in Europe had a hand. Officialdom
found no place for him in its heart, no matter whether the State was
Imperial or Republican. The Empress Eugénie once asked that his pictures
might be removed from public exhibition; President Grévy demurred when
the artist’s name was placed on the list for the Legion of Honour.
Clearly this man was no supporter of the established order of things.
Refused recognition as an artist by the school of tradition, disowned by
his own teacher, a source of hilarity to the public, Edouard Manet
caught but a glimpse of the long-wished-for land of success which he was
fated never to enjoy fully.
The battle is not quite finished, and the rout of the old school
continues to the present day. One result remains. Manet has had a
greater influence upon the art of the last forty years than any other
master during that period, and the standard which he raised has become a
rallying-point for the greatest painters of the present age.
Edouard Manet was born in Paris on January 23, 1832, at No. 5, Rue des
Petits Augustins. Thirty-six years previously Corot was born round the
corner, in the Rue du Bac. To-day the Rue des Petits Augustins is a long
street running through the Latin Quarter, southwards from the Seine and
the Louvre, known as the Rue Bonaparte. It has become the chief mart for
commerce in artists’ materials, photographs, pictures, and all the odds
and ends which fill up a studio. With a quaint appropriateness, the
birthplace of Manet faces the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
The boy was the eldest of three brothers. His father was a judge
attached to the tribunal of the Seine, and the family had been connected
with the magistrature for generations. First a pupil at Vaugirard, under
the Abbé Poiloup, Manet then entered the Collège Rollin, took his
baccalaureate in letters, and grew into an elegant man of the world. But
his inclinations clashed with his duties, and his uncle, amateur artist
and colonel in the artillery, taught him how to sketch in pen and ink.
M. Antonin Proust describes the result in a recent magazine article.
“From earliest years,” he writes, “Manet drew by instinct, with a
firmness of touch and vigour unexcelled even in his latest works. His
family was intensely proud of the boy’s uncommon gift, and his
artistically-inclined uncle, Colonel Fournier, supported him against his
father, who—despite his admiration—had other views as to his son’s
career.”
“One should never thwart a child in the choice of his career,” said
Colonel Fournier.
“If,” replied the father, “the boy is not inclined towards the ‘Palais,’
let him follow your example and become a soldier; but go in for
painting—never!”
A studio-stool tempted the boy far more than a probable seat on the
Bench. If he had to waste time, it should not be in the Salle des Pas
Perdus.
His parents sent him, towards the close of his school-days, upon a
voyage to Rio de Janeiro, hoping that travel might distract his mind
from thoughts of an artistic life. It is said that they contemplated a
naval career. Charles Méryon, it may be remembered, made the voyage
round the world in a French corvette before he took up the etcher’s
needle. Like Méryon, Manet improved his draughtsmanship, although a
sailor. He sketched incessantly. One day the captain asked him to get
out his paints and touch up a cargo of Dutch cheeses, which had become
discoloured by the sea. “Conscientiously, with a brush,” says Manet, “I
freshened up these _têtes de mort_, which reappeared in their beautiful
tints of violet and red. It was my first piece of painting.”
His voyage in the _Guadeloupe_ ended, he returned home with unaltered
determination. After some protest his father relented, and in 1850 Manet
entered the studio of Thomas Couture.
[Illustration:
THE GARDEN · EDOUARD MANET
]
Couture occupied a leading position in that group sometimes called the
“juste milieu.” Between the Romanticists and the Classicalists his
preferences perhaps were for the latter. Of extreme irritability in
temper, with a deep contempt for those in authority, he combined a keen
desire for success both popular and financial. His picture, _The Romans
of the Decadence_, in the Salon of 1847, brought both, and for a few
years he remained one of the most celebrated artists in France. Then he
criticised Delaroche, with the usual result when one painter puts
another right: he offended King Louis-Philippe, he insulted the Emperor
Napoleon III. Kings must be taken at their own valuation, if one wishes
to enjoy their good graces. It was not surprising that Couture
ultimately became a disappointed and forgotten man.
He has been called an Apostle of Classicalism. Taught first by Baron
Gros, who vacillated from one school to the other, and afterwards by
Delaroche, who endeavoured to reconcile the opposing parties, Couture
could hardly have taken any other position in the art world of the
’forties. “He was apart among the painters of the day, as far removed
from the cold academic school as from the new art just then making its
way, with Delacroix at its head. The famous quarrel between the
Classical and Romantic camps left him indifferent. He was of too
independent a nature to follow any chief, however great.” This is the
testimony of an American artist, Mr. P. A. Healy, who studied under
Couture about the time Manet was in the atelier, and shows that the
future Impressionist worked under a man by no means curbed by tradition.
According to his pupil, Couture’s great precept was, “Look at Nature;
copy Nature.” Manet’s doctrine was couched in almost the same words, “Do
nothing without consulting Nature.”
We know that during the time Manet remained in Couture’s studio, master
and pupil quarrelled incessantly. The reason usually given is that Manet
would not respect tradition. But neither would Couture. “That in the
captain’s but a choleric word, which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.”
One was there to teach, the other to be taught. The temperaments of the
two men were fundamentally different. The thick-set, scowling Couture,
of shoemaker descent, would naturally rub against the grain of the
rather dandified young scion of the magistrature. Couture hated the
middle classes, and Manet belonged to the “haute bourgeoisie.” Manet’s
family was legal to the bone, and Couture detested lawyers even more
than he disliked doctors. With all these drawbacks Couture was
admittedly the best teacher in Paris. Manet evidently recognised the
advantage, for he remained in the studio for six years, until he was
twenty-five years of age, although quite able to sever the connection
had he wished.
Then came the “wanderjahre,” which commenced in 1856. Manet visited
Germany, Holland, and Italy. In the Low Countries, Franz Hals exerted a
great and permanent influence over the student; Rembrandt was copied in
Germany; in Italy, Titian and Tintoretto received his homage. Dresden,
Prague, Vienna, Munich, Venice and Florence were visited. Upon his
return to Paris he copied assiduously in the Louvre, and it was in this
wonderful gallery that he so thoroughly mastered all that a young
painter could learn from the Spanish School. He did not visit Madrid
until 1865. His Spanish subjects before that date were the result of a
careful study of Velazquez and Goya in the National Collection and the
visit of an Iberian troupe of players to Paris. In the Louvre he copied
paintings by Velazquez, Titian, and Tintoretto.
Of living artists Courbet considerably influenced the first period of
Manet’s activity. Ever on the fringe of Impressionism, although never in
the group, Courbet was a romantically inclined realist who taught the
younger men to turn to everyday life for their subjects. His canvases
were full of colour; although they have sadly toned down in the course
of time, owing to the curious and unsuccessful experiments he made in
trying to combine his practice with his theories.
In 1859 Manet sent his work for the first time to the Salon. The
_Absinthe Drinker_, strong, but reminiscent of Courbet, was rejected.
The Salon was held every two years, and in 1861 both his contributions
were accepted, one being a double portrait of his father and mother, the
other a Spanish study called the _Guitarero_. For this Manet was awarded
Honourable Mention, his first and almost his final official distinction,
for he received no other until the year before his death, twenty-one
years later. Working with tremendous energy in his studio in the Rue
Lavoisier, Manet became the centre of a circle of friends which included
Legros, Bracquemond, Jongkind, Monet, Degas, Fantin-Latour, Harpignies,
and Whistler. The Guitar-player was an undoubted success. “_Caramba_,”
writes genial Theo. Gautier, “Velazquez would greet this fellow with a
friendly little wink, and Goya would hand him a pipe for his papelito.”
Upon the jury it is said that Ingres himself was flattering, and the
_mention honorable_ was ascribed to the lead of Delacroix. Couture’s
sneer that Manet would become merely the Daumier of 1860 did not seem
likely to be justified.
Manet was now engaged upon several pictures which must not be ignored.
_Music at the Tuileries_ (1861), refused at the Salon, was, as its name
implies, an open-air study of the fashionable crowds gathered round the
bandstand in the lovely gardens by the palace. The _Street Singer_ is
the earliest of the almost realistic renderings of everyday life which
the Impressionists delighted in. A sad-faced girl (a well-known
character of the day) standing with a guitar at a street corner; the
type is the same to this hour both in London and Paris, one of the
thousand wretched beings superfluous to a great city, at once its
pleasure and its sport.
_The Boy with a Sword_, now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, also
belongs to this period. The picture is masterly. Inspired from Spain, it
is, like most great paintings, full of simplicity, full of strength.
_The Old Musician_ is also extremely Spanish, with a haunting
reminiscence of _Los Borrachos_ by Velazquez (although Manet had not yet
directly seen this canvas). A small group watches an old man about to
play his fiddle. Some boys, a little girl with a doll (a figure very
dear to Manet), a man drinking, a native of the Orient in a turban and a
long robe, these form a straggling composition. The picture is a fantasy
of a nation the painter loved but had never yet seen.
Two personal matters affected the life of Manet about this time. His
father died, leaving him a considerable private fortune, thus making the
artist financially independent of dealers and the ups and downs of
public exhibition. In 1863 he married Mlle. Suzanne Leenhoff, a Dutch
lady of great musical talent. From one point of view 1863 was
disastrous, from another triumphant. Hitherto a man of promise, Manet
now developed into a man of notoriety.
The little “one-man show” at the gallery of M. Martinet, Boulevard des
Italiens, presaged the coming storm. Manet exhibited the _Spanish
Ballet_, _Music at the Tuileries_, _Lola de Valence_, and nearly the
whole of his other work up to that date. Baudelaire was enthusiastic.
Verses on _Lola de Valence_ are enshrined in “Fleurs de Mal.” Other
critics were not so kind. M. Paul Mantz did not restrain his pen and
referred to “a struggle between noisy, plastery tones, and black,” with
a result “hard, sinister, and deadly,” the whole summed up as “a
caricature of colour.”
The Salon of 1863, which followed, has become famous not through what it
accepted, but by reason of what it refused. In a contemporary chronicle
the most notable pictures of the exhibition are _La Prière au Désert_ by
Gustave Guillaumet, a _Sainte Famille_ by Bouguereau, _La Déroute_ by
Gustave Boulanger, _La Bataille de Solférino_ by Meissonier, and the
_Chasse au Renard_ by Courbet. With the exception of Courbet it is an
academical list, although it is extraordinary how Courbet crept in.
The list of rejected artists is amazing. Like Herod’s soldiers, the jury
seems to have been chiefly occupied in stamping out youth. Bracquemond,
Cals, Cazin, Fantin-Latour, Harpignies, Jongkind, J. P. Laurens, Legros,
Manet, Pissarro, Vallon, Whistler, these and many others were thrown
out. The work was too vigorously performed, and Napoleon III. authorised
the opening of another gallery in the same building as the old Salon,
known as the Salon des Refusés. The most striking canvas in this room
was Manet’s first great work, the _Déjeuner sur l’Herbe_ (_Breakfast on
the Grass_), sometimes called _Le Bain_.
The painting challenged opposition on two separate grounds. The first
was its subject; the second its technique. Between two young men
stretched on the grass, wearing the black frock-coats of a latter-day
civilisation, sits a nude woman drying her legs with a towel. In the
background another woman “en chemise” is paddling in the stream. In
defence of such a subject it is usual to refer to the painters of the
Renaissance, who, without exciting angry comment, mixed draped and
undraped figures in their compositions. There is a celebrated Giorgione
at the Louvre to which none objected. Other times, other manners.
Infanticide is not encouraged in England although it is the practice in
China. Many social practices of the Renaissance, innocent enough in the
eyes of that golden age, are distinctly discouraged by the criminal code
of to-day. Forty years have elapsed since the _Déjeuner sur l’Herbe_ was
first exhibited, and Mrs. Grundy is not the power she was. But if any
English painter hung a representation of two dressmaker’s assistants
bathing in the Serpentine under exactly the same conditions as Manet
depicted the little party at Saint-Ouen, there would be some sharp
criticism.
It is far more pleasing to discuss Manet’s manner of painting. In a
period when work was sombre in tone and Nature rapidly losing her place
in art, Manet with his _Déjeuner sur l’Herbe_, _Olympia_, and _Le Fifre
de la Garde_, changed the current with startling directness.
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT OF BERTHE MORISOT · EDOUARD MANET
]
In these and other canvases there was not a shadow, the surface being
from end to end clear and highly coloured. Where a Classicalist would
have rendered a shadow in the usual burnt umber, Manet made his tones a
little less clear, but always coloured and always in value. His method
of working was to discard all blacks and preparations of blacks. This
was directly antagonistic to the teaching of Couture, who painted on a
black canvas. Manet drew straight away on a white canvas with the end of
his brush. Then, after having endeavoured to render with a single tone
all the pale parts, he carried the lights right into the shadows, of
which he studied the slightest nuance. The result was novel to the
vision, and strange to the public. The _Déjeuner sur l’Herbe_ was a
masterly rendering of white flesh against black clothes, which was not
appreciated because it was so foreign to the eye.
“Be not the first by whom the new is tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside,”
is an excellent motto for painters who wish to achieve popular renown,
but it was never the motto of Manet and the Impressionists.
To a certain extent the Salon des Refusés was successful. The jury of
the old Salon had received a fright, and in 1865 they opened their doors
very widely. Making a virtue of necessity, they reversed their policy
and welcomed the whole artistic world, in order to obviate the necessity
of a second Salon des Refusés.
_Olympia_ was far in advance of anything the artist had yet attempted.
In composition it recalls Velazquez, Goya, and Titian. A girl, anæmic
and decidedly unprepossessing, quite nude, is stretched upon a couch
covered with an Indian shawl of yellowish tint. Behind is a negress,
with a bouquet of flowers. At the foot of the bed a black cat strikes a
sharp note of colour against the white linen.
Gautier and Barbey D’Aurevilly—both men of exotic genius—received the
painting with great favour. They found themselves alone in their
opinions. Again the subject displeased the crowd, whilst the
extraordinary technique exasperated the art world. Even Courbet,
reformer as he was, repudiated it. “It is flat and lacks modelling. It
looks like the queen of spades coming out of a bath.” Manet retorted:
“He bores us with his modelling. Courbet’s idea of rotundity is a
billiard-ball.” The general verdict, however, was one in which ridicule
and mockery were equally mixed. A religious picture, _Christ reviled by
the Soldiers_, received no greater encouragement, and in the next Salon
Manet was rejected without mercy. _Le Fifre de la Garde_ and _The Tragic
Actor_ were both refused. He had provoked such fierce animosity that he
was even excluded from the representative exhibition of French art
included in the Universal Exhibition of 1867.
Luckily, no longer dependent for money on his art, Manet was able to
exhibit under more favourable circumstances. Like Rodin a few years ago,
Manet opened a large gallery in the Avenue de l’Alma, which he shared
with Courbet. Here he collected fifty works, including the _Boy with the
Sword_, several Spanish subjects, seascapes, portraits, studies of still
life, aquafortes, even copies. A catalogue was issued containing a short
introduction. “The artist does not say to you to-day, Come and see
flawless works, but, Come and see sincere works.” Another sentence
shares with a title of Claude Monet’s the origin of the generic phrase,
“Impressionism.” “It is the effect of sincerity to give to a painter’s
works a character that makes them resemble a protest, whereas the
painter has only thought of rendering his impression.” Manet never
considered himself as a man in revolt.
The artist had now a considerable following, and was supported by
several vigorous pens in the press, notably that wielded by Emile Zola,
who had been introduced to Manet by an old school friend become artist,
Cézanne. Zola’s campaign in 1866, following upon the rejection by the
Salon of the _Fifre de la Garde_, saw some hard fights. Zola saluted
Manet as the greatest artist of the age, and incidentally overturned a
few pedestals in the Academy. Animosity directed against the artist was
transferred to the journalist, and Zola was soon ejected from his
position under M. de Villemessant as art critic to the _Figaro_ (then
famous as _l’Événement_). Artists of the old school used to buy copies
of this journal containing the offending articles, seek out Zola or
Manet on the boulevards, and then destroy the paper under their eyes
with every manifestation of scorn.
About this time the gatherings in the Café Guerbois, in the Rue Guyot,
behind the Parc Monceau, were held twice a week regularly, and the
School of Batignolles became an established fact. The group was mixed,
and held together more through comradeship than through identical aims.
It included Whistler, Legros, Fantin-Latour, Monet, Degas (a young man
fresh from the Ecole des Beaux Arts), Duranty, Zola, Vignaux, sometimes
Proust, Henner, and Alfred Stevens. To these names should be added
Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Bazille, and Cézanne. Monet had been attracted
by Manet since the little exhibition at Monsieur Martinet’s in 1863,
although they did not meet until 1866, the year that Camille Pissarro
joined the camp. Fantin-Latour was an old chum, the friendship
commencing in 1857, and he commemorated these gatherings in a picture of
the members of the group, which attracted much attention in the Salon of
1870.
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT OF M. P——, THE LION-HUNTER · EDOUARD MANET
]
The home life of Edouard Manet was strangely different from what one
would expect of such an artist, so notorious in the Paris of the Empire
that when he entered a café its frequenters turned to stare at the
incomer. Manet lived with his wife and his mother in the Rue St.
Pétersbourg. The old lady, faithful to her remembrance of the age of
Charles X. and the Citizen King, lived amidst souvenirs of the past.
Modernity was entirely absent from the little household, and those who
anticipated evidences of the spirit of revolution which characterised
Manet in the world of the boulevards here discovered the atmosphere,
even the decoration and furniture, of the Louis-Philippe period. Romance
had also entered into the hitherto prosaic Manet family. Mlle. Berthe
Morisot, a clever young artist from Bourges, had married Manet’s brother
Eugène, and became an ardent follower of her brother-in-law’s artistic
doctrines, whom she aided frequently.
A famous work of this period is _The Execution of the Emperor
Maximilian_, the subject representing a file of dark-hued Mexicans
shooting the unfortunate monarch. It is a vast canvas, slightly
inconsistent with many of the artist’s theories. Not lacking in
actuality (it was commenced within a few months of the event), it was of
historical _genre_ and painted in a studio from models, the face of the
Emperor being copied from a photograph. Rarely, if ever before, seen in
London, this magnificent painting was received enthusiastically when
exhibited at the first collection made by the International Society in
1898.
In France the authorities forbade the public exhibition of the
_Execution_, the tragedy having had too intimate a relation with French
politics; but at the Salon of 1869 Manet was represented by _The
Balcony_, which provoked considerable derision from critics and public.
The famous duel with Duranty took place early in the following year.
Duranty, an old friend and journalistic supporter of the movement, of
great literary reputation in the ’sixties and ’seventies, but quite
forgotten now, suddenly published a newspaper article in which the
artist was violently attacked. There was no palpable reason for such a
strange outbreak, and at the next gathering at the Café Guerbois, Manet
requested explanations. In his anger the artist struck the writer across
the face. Manet had for seconds Zola and Vigniaux, and his adversary was
slightly wounded in the breast. Within a few years Manet stretched out
his hand in friendship, and the quarrel was made up and forgotten by
both parties.
The tremendous upheaval of the year 1870 had its effect upon Manet’s
art, as it had upon the whole national and intellectual life of France.
It marks the end of his first period, for after the war Manet paid more
attention to the question of lighting, and gathered closer to the little
group of “Luminarists” of which Claude Monet was the most significant
figure. Early in 1870 the artist, when painting near Paris, in the park
of his friend De Nittis, for the first time woke up to the prime
importance of working “en plein air.” The war intervened, and Manet
served with the colours. After the campaign he returned to his easel,
but no longer an exclusive follower of the Spanish School and the
Romanticists of the type of Courbet.
At the call of their country, artists and authors alike followed the
flag. One can still remember how short-sighted Alphonse Daudet kept
sentry-go during the first awful winter, and how, almost at the end of
the siege of Paris, the brilliant Henri Regnault was shot down in a
sortie. Bastien-Lepage was in the field, and one of the group of the
Café Guerbois, Bazille, was killed in action. Manet enlisted in the
Garde Nationale, and, for some reason which is not obvious, was at once
promoted to the Staff. Unfortunately, Meissonier was nominated Colonel
of the same regiment, which shows that the État-Major was quite ignorant
of the state of contemporary art. Meissonier, a man of strong opinions,
the recognised head of his profession, member of the Institute, was
covered with official honour. Manet, with equally forcible convictions,
the hero of the Salon des Refusés, was pariah to the Academy. It was not
likely that two such men could get on well together.
Some years afterwards Manet displayed his feelings. He was gazing in a
public gallery at a _Charge of Cuirassiers_, recently painted by
Meissonier. A crowd gathered round. His criticism was short. “It’s good,
really good. Everything is in steel except the cuirasses.” The _mot_
travelled round the town, and duly reached the ears of the venerable
artist at Passy. Manet saw active service. He was under fire at the
Battle of Champigny, and also took part in the suppression of the
Commune. A vivid little sketch by Manet shows a Parisian street, after
some sharp fighting with the insurgents. It may be found reproduced in
Duret’s monograph. Broken down in health, Manet joined his mother and
sister at their retreat in the Pyrenees, and at Oléron painted the
_Battle of the “Kearsage” and “Alabama,”_ a wonderful piece of
sea-painting, although executed far from the actual scene of the
engagement.
[Illustration:
EDOUARD MANET
]
Manet had exhausted the paternal inheritance and was living on the
fruits of his labour. The Impressionist School, as we now know it, was
at the height of its activity, but by no means at the summit of its
success. It assumed as its title the designation which had been applied
to it as a nickname. The origin of this title is obscure. As already
mentioned, Manet used the term in his introduction to the catalogue of
1867. Claude Monet named one of his pictures, a sunset, exhibited in the
Salon des Refusés, “Impressions.” Ruskin though had used the same term
years before in describing a canvas by Turner. Many of the members of
the group were in the most abject poverty until the celebrated dealer,
M. Durand-Ruel, came to their assistance. Manet had better sales than
the rest of his brethren, for several collectors began to buy from his
easel, viz. Gérard, Faure (of the Opera), Hecht, Ephrussi, Bernstein,
May, and De Bellis. It is characteristic of the man that in his own
studio he exhibited the works of his friends in order that the wealthy
buyers he was beginning to attract should also invest in the productions
of the less fortunate Impressionists.
In 1873 Manet contributed to the Salon a portrait of the engraver Belot
seated in the Café Guerbois. Known as _Le Bon Bock_, it was his most
popular success both with public and critics. Over eighty sittings were
given before the canvas was completed. Manet had departed far from the
technique of the Dutch portrait-painters, but _Le Bon Bock_ strongly
suggests the manner of Hals, although ranking on its own merits as an
independent triumph. To the year of _Le Bon Bock_ succeeded a long
period of public indifference and artistic warfare. The Impressionists
held their first collective exhibition, which was bitterly disappointing
in its results. The public had changed but little. _The Opera Ball_ and
_The Lady with Fans_ (about 1873), the _Railway_, painted wholly in the
open air, and _Polichinelle_ (exhibited at the Salon of 1874), _The
Artist_ and _L’Argenteuil_ of 1875, all were received with disfavour.
It is extremely curious to note how canvases which appear to-day
perfectly normal in their methods and aims positively outraged the
feelings of critics thirty years ago. _L’Artiste_, a magnificent
portrait of the engraver Desboutins, was refused by the Salon together
with _Le Linge_. _L’Argenteuil_, a simple representation of two
life-sized figures by the borders of the Seine, would be received with
acclamation instead of disdain. Manet and his group were undoubtedly
educating the public, but progress was very slow. There was an outburst
of opinion in favour of the artist when the Salon refused _L’Artiste_
and _Le Linge_. One sentence of criticism summed up the general feeling
of those who were not entirely prejudiced against the new spirit. “The
jury is at liberty to say that it does not like Manet. But it is not at
liberty to cry ‘Down with Manet! To the doors with Manet!’”
Reaction on the part of the jury followed, exactly as it had followed in
previous years. After the success of the Salon des Refusés Manet was
accepted. Then, being rejected, he opened the gallery of the Avenue
d’Alma, and was hung by the jury at the ensuing Salon. Rejected in 1876,
the outcry in the press surprised the jury, who accepted his works in
1877. These extraordinary ups and downs culminated in 1878, when the
jury of the Exposition Universelle, held in that year, definitely
refused to hang any of his canvases. In the opinion of this jury the
painter of _Le Bon Bock_ was not a representative French artist. Ten
years had changed the official art world but little, for the same thing
had happened in 1867. This was almost the last insult Manet had to
endure. In 1881 he received a second medal at the Salon. The discussion
in the Committee had been acrimonious, but seventeen members of the jury
were found to support the award. Amongst the names of the majority are
those of Carolus-Duran, Cazin, Henner, Lalanne, de Neuville, and Roll.
One cannot deny that Manet’s work greatly varied. The portrait of M.
Faure, in the character of Hamlet, was to a certain extent conventional
studio-painting, and could offend nobody. The subject would not provoke
the most susceptible. M. Faure was celebrated on the stage of the Grand
Opera, possessed considerable wealth, and was one of Manet’s most
devoted friends. _Nana_, sent to the Salon together with the portrait of
M. Faure, was rejected. The technique was brilliant, but the subject,
although harmless enough, suggested Zola’s heroine. Zola’s book was not
published until 1879, but the name designated a class apart.
In 1880 Manet exhibited a wonderful portrait of M. Antonin Proust, and
in the December of the following year his old friend, now Directeur des
Beaux-Arts, was able to give to his life-long companion the Cross of the
Legion of Honour. Had Manet no friends at Court, he would certainly not
have received this coveted decoration. President Grévy objected when he
saw the painter’s name, and would have struck out Manet from the list
had not Gambetta exerted some little pressure.
But the struggle was nearly ended. Manet was dying. “This war to the
knife has done me much harm,” he is reported to have told Antonin
Proust. “I have suffered from it greatly, but it has whipped me up.... I
would not wish that any artist should be praised and covered with
adulation at the outset, for that means the annihilation of his
personality.”
On New Year’s Day, 1882, he received the Cross, and at the Salon
exhibited _Un Bar aux Folies-Bergères_, a barmaid enshrined amidst her
glasses at a Paris music-hall, and a portrait, _Jeanne_. Since 1879
paralysis had been slowly sapping his powers. Edouard Manet died near
Paris on April 30, 1883, at the early age of fifty-one. Disappointment,
injured pride, lack of appreciation, continued and strong hostility,
each had had its effect upon a physique always sensitive and never too
strong. The artist had died for his art.
[Illustration:
A GARDEN IN RUEIL · EDOUARD MANET
]
[Illustration:
FISHING · EDOUARD MANET
]
The secret of Manet’s power is sincerity and individuality; his main
effort was a rendering of fact; his deepest interest the truthful
juxtaposition of values, the broad and simple treatment of planes,
combined with a constant search for the character of the person or
object portrayed.
The influences which guided Manet during the earlier portion of his
career have been noticed at length. He travelled extensively, and his
works bear many souvenirs of foreign masters. But sufficient stress is
not always laid upon the influences at work around Manet in Paris,
namely, the influences of Delacroix, Corot, and the men of 1830, who
carried but one stage farther the methods and tradition of the English
masters, Constable, Bonington, Girtin and Turner.
Apart from sources of inspiration Manet was personally gifted. He
possessed (as M. Duret so well points out) the faculty of sight, a gift
from Nature which cannot be acquired by will or work. Technique he had
obtained after six years’ hard study in the most severe atelier in
Paris. But technique is a subsidiary equipment, for a complete command
over one’s materials does not always imply the possession of genius.
“The fools!” said Manet with bitterness to Proust. “They were for ever
telling me my work was unequal. That was the highest praise they could
bestow. Yet it was always my ambition to rise—not to remain on a certain
level, not to remake one day what I had made the day before, but to be
inspired again and again by a new aspect of things, to strike frequently
a fresh note.”
“Ah! I’m before my time. A hundred years hence people will be happier,
for their sight will be clearer than ours to-day.”
Ambition to rise, never to remain on the same level! That is the whole
doctrine of art, and the supreme epitaph for Edouard Manet, pioneer and
master.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
GEORGES D’ESPAGNAT
]