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Breakfast on the grass

Edouard Manet • Painting, 1863, 208×264 cm
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About the artwork
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Nude, Genre scene
Style of art: Realism
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1863
Size: 208×264 cm
Artwork in selections: 171 selections
Exhibitions history

Description of the artwork «Breakfast on the grass»

"Breakfast on the grass" produced a bombshell. In any workshop of any painter of the nineteenth century could no longer receive such or even anything like a similar picture. While the Interior has conquered "The Romans era of decline" and endless Venus and odalisques, she turned the painting, for it was not at that time any of the terms or traditions, in which it would be possible to write. And everything was to this effect worse.

The jury of the French Salon, never distinguished favor to the young artists, in 1863, was particularly merciless. So much so that even Napoleon III was dissatisfied with the number not admitted to the exhibition works. Then the Emperor decided to throw in the same building simultaneously with the official Salon, the Salon of the rejected.

Perhaps there was a pattern in the framework of the official exhibition, it would not have become the first in the history of modern art with canvas, over which crowds of spectators laughed and shyly whispered. Manet has become the most discussed artist of Paris, however, he wanted a completely different fame.

The picture, originally called "skinny" was conceived as an artistic dialogue and a rethinking of several masterpieces: "The rural concert" Giorgione and "The Judgment Of Paris" Raphael. First inspired Manet to write two naked women next to clothed men, and the second to place the figure in space. Only women mane – not a nymph and not a goddess.

Most of the ridicule caused the figure of a woman, who tries the water. It was said that she washed, and added in a whisper: you know, after which it is washed. In the picture I saw a scene of a sexual nature, and sitting a girl – a prostitute: too straight and defiant in her. The thing about painting furiously hissed: "obscenity", "vulgarity", the "ugliness".

When crowds of spectators and critics puzzled alone managed to restrain his Holy wrath, it came to the artistic features of the painting. And, it was here that Manet made still more inexcusable liberties than in the choice of subject. It is absolutely unforgivable did with the term – the figure of a woman in the background is too large, each of the characters in the story as if is closer to the viewer than would be possible in reality. Later art critics say "involved spectator," and the experimenters of the new generation will repeat this trick with cowering at the prospect. In 1863, a picture declared "ridiculous", and the artist – Amateur "dauber".

Author: Anna Sidelnikova
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