An Analysis of Three Paintings by French Artist Edouard Manet
Amongst the many great European painters of the 19th century stands the French painter and proto-modernist, Edouard Manet (1832–1883) and his convention-defying paintings. Like many of his friends, Manet was ostracized and criticized by the established French Academy and the rest of the ultra-conservative art world at that time for his preference to paint realistic artworks which featured scenes taken out of ordinary life such as drunkards, public parties, and the occasional obscenely nude women. These were all in contrast to the production of historic, mythological picturesque landscapes and sceneries that the establishment so rigidly preferred. It was his refusal to adhere to accepted standards of aesthetic style and taste that often prevented Manet and his contemporaries from getting their artworks featured in the prestigious Paris Salon. (Catwright, 2022)
As Manet matured as an artist, his style and preference for subject matter rapidly evolved from paintings with sexual implications to scenes that captured the leisurely moments of everyday Parisian life. To demonstrate this stylistic development, I have selected three paintings: The Dead Christ With Angels (1864), The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil (1874), and A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) for this academic study. By order of their introduction, each painting here is measured 70 5/8 x 59 inches, 24 x 39 1/4 inches, and 37.8 in × 51.2 inches. These three paintings come from three different periods of the artist’s life: the 1860s, 1870s, and his final years in the 1880s.
The oldest painting in the three, The Dead Christ With Angels, depicts a sorrowful portrayal of the lifeless body of the Savior being tended to by two Angels. Christ is placed in an undignified pose, his corpse exposed entirely for the viewer to see. Dressed only in his white loincloth, Christ is seated on what is presumably a rock draped with a large, white garment that may be his shroud. Christ’s lifeless eyes are open but floating aimlessly as if in delirium. Beside him, on both his left and right sides, are two melancholic angels dressed in red and orange clothing respectively.
A vague halo can be seen atop Christ’s head while his spear wound and the stigmata can be found in his arms, feet, and chest. In the foreground can be seen a loose collection of stones and two large rocks with a snake slithering between them heading towards a vaguely seen bush with green leaves. Lastly, the painting possesses a background of the color dark gray, further emphasizing the sadness of the scene. The painting is uncharacteristic of religious art which has often strived to express a sense of austerity and divinity for its subject matter. Indeed, there is absent the grandioseness and vitality that is traditionally seen in Christian art; the painting instead seems to be aiming to highlight Christ’s humanity above his divine nature. Even the angels appear to be very human-like in their faces and expressions.
The painting’s style feels reminiscent of the old masters from the Renaissance such as Raphael and Michelangelo. The clothing of the Angels is certainly antiquated compared to the Victorian-style clothing of the 19th century. The choice of colors and their flatness certainly indicates this alongside the wide, sweeping brush strokes that would later be characteristic of Manet, seen most prominently in the Angels’ wings. It is also worth pointing out how Christ’s right hand and two feet have a sort of “blur” in them which somehow still produces the image of a thumb and toes, respectively. At a distance, they appear like darker shades of Christ’s skin tone but become much more apparent when seen up close. In contrast to the later two paintings, the artist at this point seems to be still developing style but signs of his growth are already beginning to show. Realism, as we would later see in the other two paintings, is the perspective that went into the making of this artwork. Realism is defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as:
“In the arts, the accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favor of close observation of outward appearances”
The depiction of Christ here roused the disappointment of critics who complained of the human-like angels, lack of spirituality, and more notably how “the battered figure of Christ more closely resembled that of a dead coal miner than the son of God” (Rabinow, 2004.)
The humanity of Manet’s artwork would further be elevated in the next painting, The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil (1874). This painting marks a dramatic shift from his works of an earlier period concerning both his style and preferred subject matter. The artwork depicts the family of the artist Claude Monet, one of Manet’s famous contemporaries, relaxing leisurely in their garden in the Parisian suburb of Argenteuil. The renowned artist, Monet can be seen on the far left (wearing a black hat) tending to some red flowers while his wife, Camille Monet, and her son can be observed sitting on the grass beside a nearby tree, her gaze facing directly to the viewer.
The son, like his father, is both looking elsewhere. In the foreground to the left are three chickens: a rooster, a hen, and a chickㅡperhaps a playful nod to the three family members. Per his realism, this scene is exactly what was depicted when Manet painted them all in person; no embellishments, exaggerations, or idealizations. The fine, detailed “renaissance” like polish that I observed in The Dead Christ With Angels is no longer present in this painting. Instead, the viewer is met with this fuzzy, blurry quality that would become atypical of Manet’s art in the 1870s, based on observations of other paintings such as Boating (1874) and Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil (1874). His brushwork appears to have gotten rougher and lost much of the smoothness that it had, indicating a departure from his roots in the old masters. They have become what the scholar Catwright (1981) describes as:
“He left seemingly wild brush strokes visible and avoided the careful build-up of texture using gradual transitions of color expected of fine artists.”
This can be observed throughout the painting. For example, rather than illustrating the plants surrounding the family, he instead paints them as vaguely identifiable shapes and fills the rest of their appearance with thick brush strokes of the appropriate color. The same could also be said for the Monet family, whose faces are only lightly drawn with detail and precision, with much focus and effort going into the detail and color of their clothes. This is because Manet’s goal is more towards using brush strokes for effect rather than conveying detail. These stylistic choices were a technique that Manet learned from studying the paintings of the romantic painter Eugene Delacroix (1798–1863). (Catwright, 2022) Yet for all of Manet’s exploration of new techniques, themes, and subject matter, this period of rough, brush textures would not remain permanent. I find this particular painting and its contemporaries too rugged and rough for my liking and they honestly look as if Manet merely smudged his canvas with tissue paper rather than using a proper brush.
Furthermore, whereas the first painting was a development, the second painting was a discovery, and the third is incredible mastery. Before his death in 1883, Manet painted a work that could easily be described as his greatest masterpiece: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882). The painting depicts a melancholic, solitary barmaid standing behind a marble counter filled with bottles containing dozens of different bottles of alcoholic drinks alongside a censer filled with oranges. Her sad gaze, although facing forward to the viewer, is looking at nothing. Behind her is a large mirror that depicts the bar’s lively patrons. To the right of the barmaid’s reflection is a brown-mustached man with a black top hat who appears to be standing in front of her. The woman’s sadness and the man’s presence in front of the barmaid hint at a relationship between the two but alas, it is a cleverly made optical illusion. As it turns out, the man’s position is located to the far left of the barmaid thus leaving her entirely solitary.
Out of all the paintings mentioned thus far, I believe that this painting is Manet’s magnum opus, a culmination of everything he had learned and developed as an artist. The painting strikes a fine balance between his early paintings and the blurry, flat textures of the 1870s. Coupled with the optical illusion, the blurry and once-wild brush techniques have been tuned down and refined to even greater effect than before; reproducing what may have been the atmosphere of the bars and cafe culture of that era. The artwork can be seen as a tribute to the cafe culture that the artist was especially fond of. (Catwright, 2022)
The mirror adorning the entirety of the background behind the barmaid demonstrates an effective and realistic portrayal of what a said object would do. Mirrors, although they commonly reflect any image before it, can become dirty and dusty most especially in public places such as the cafe in the artwork. Therefore, they would only vaguely capture what is before them in such instances. As such, we see a mirror for what it is, an object that reflects both the reflection and the dirt of its surface. Meanwhile, the rest of the painting is specially refined and filled with polished detail. Whether it be the barmaid, her clothing, the bottles in front of her, or the marble table she leans on… the spotless brilliance of Manet’s style is prevalent in it all! The “smoky, somber” vibes combined with the aesthetics of Victorian-era clothing and the alcoholic beverages present are like the cherry on top of a fine drink.
Edouard Manet, like the rest of his contemporaries, would all go down into the ranks of art history as groundbreaking painters despite the stiff opposition to their era’s establishment. His experimental style and the popularization of realist subjects inspired artists to begin experimenting with uncharted creative territory and subject matter. As the Art Historian Beatrice Farwell writes:
“Manet has been universally regarded as the Father of Modernism. With Courbet, he was among the first to take serious risks with the public whose favor he sought, the first to make alla prima painting the standard technique for oil painting, and one of the first to take liberties with Renaissance perspective and to offer “pure painting” as a source of aesthetic pleasure. He was a pioneer, again with Courbet, in the rejection of humanistic and historical subject matter, and shared with Degas the establishment of modern urban life as acceptable material for high art.”
Although a stretch to say, I doubt that the depiction of regular, contemporary life in the painting would have become tenable for the tastes of critics and collectors had it not been for the efforts of artists like Edouard Manet who so strived to immortalize the mundane pleasures of the social life and culture that he lived in. Being someone who feels as if he lives in bleak, unremarkable times, most especially concerning the creative arts, seeing the work of artists like Manet (who died over 139 years ago) inspires me with the perspective of viewing the present as something worth commemorating despite the disappointments and blandness that have so far marked the 2020s. With a dash of romanticism, the past suddenly seems to me to have been a far better, and more interesting place to beㅡbut that should not be the case.
In an age of countless distractions and dopamine-inducing entertainment, the paintings of Edouard Manet ultimately serve to remind people like me to pay close attention to everyday life and the society that I live in and that any subject, no matter how plain or boring it may seem, is something still worth looking into and perhaps even admiring.
Bibliography:
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “realism.” Encyclopedia Britannica, October 6, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/art/realism-art.
Cartwright, Mark. “Edouard Manet.” World History Encyclopedia. World History Org, November 9, 2022. https://www.worldhistory.org/Edouard_Manet/.
Farwell, Beatrice. Manet and the Nude: A Study in Iconography in the Second Empire. New York: Garland, 1981.
Rabinow, Rebecca. “Édouard Manet (1832–1883).” Metmuseum.org. Metropolitan Museum, October 2004. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mane/hd_mane.htm.