Happy Birthday Édouard Manet ~ 1832 – 1883 The roughly painted style and photographic lighting in his works was seen as specifically modern, and as a challenge to the Renaissance works Manet copied or used as source material. His work is considered early modern, partially because of the black outlining of figures, which draws attention to the surface of the picture plane and the material quality of paint. He became friends with the Impressionists Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro through another painter, Berthe Morisot, who was a member of the group and drew him into their activities. The Railway, widely known as The Gare Saint-Lazare, was painted in 1873. The setting is the urban landscape of Paris in the late 19th century. Using his favorite model in his last painting of her, a fellow painter, Victorine Meurent, also the model for Olympia and the Luncheon on the Grass, sits before an iron fence holding a sleeping puppy and an open book in her lap. Next to her is a little girl with her back to the painter, watching a train pass beneath them. Instead of choosing the traditional natural view as background for an outdoor scene, Manet opts for the iron grating which boldly stretches across the canvas The only evidence of the train is its white cloud of steam. In the distance, modern apartment buildings are seen. This arrangement compresses the foreground into a narrow focus. The traditional convention of deep space is ignored. Historian Isabelle Dervaux has described the reception this painting received when it was first exhibited at the official Paris Salon of 1874: Visitors and critics found its subject baffling, its composition incoherent, and its execution sketchy. Caricaturists ridiculed Manets picture, in which only a few recognized the symbol of modernity that it has become today. The painting is currently in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 12:42:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015