"Fish (Still Life)," Edouard Manet, 1864.

Y'all know Manet. He loved doing still lifes, and seems to have patterned this on works from the Dutch Golden Age. While carefully depicting the preparations for a fish dinner, he's very much confronting the viewer, which people of the time found unorthodox and avant-garde. (Strange to think of this as avant-garde!)

The fish is a mullet; next to it is a red gurnet, a small eel, and a pile of oysters; there's a lemon and a big brass pot, which seems to indicate that they're going to be poached or braised for dinner. Looks good to me...

From the Art Institute of Chicago.

"Before the Mirror," Édouard Manet, 1876.

Y'all should know Manet by now, I won't bother going into his history.

Here we have a lady looking in a mirror; like some of Manet's other paintings, like "Olympia," it shows quite a bit of skin and may have hints of carnal activity. Unlike "Olympia" and other Manet paintings, this is done in a very broad, quick style.

Manet was often noted for the realism of his paintings, but here we have full-bore Impressionism. The dots of color in the background give a hint of floral wallpaper, and the whole scene is depicted in broad, quick strokes that nevertheless do a good job of telling us what we're seeing.

Manet loved to depict the modern world as well as intimate scenes, and this works well as both. Was it meant as erotica? Hard to say; some may have seen it that way in its time, but now it seems almost sweetly innocent.

From the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

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"Portrait of Émile Zola," Edouard Manet, 1868.

Manet needs no introduction. But here we have one of the great stars of 19th century French letters, Emile Zola. Here he is painted at a time when he was still best known as an art critic and for his recently published novel "Thérèse Raquin."

Manet is a bit waggish here...on the wall behind the disorderly desk are a few small prints. One is of Manet's own controversial painting "Olympia," which Zola championed as Manet's best work. There's an etching from Velazquez's "Bacchus," referring to Manet and Zola's shared fondness for Spanish art. And a print of a Japanese wrestler by Utagawa Kuniyaki II, along with a Japanese screen, all point to the influence Japanese art had on the art culture of France at the time....which lent itself to the growing Impressionist movement.

He's also distracted, not really looking at us, lost in his own thoughts. He doesn't address the viewer at all, but is at work composing something in his head.

From Musée d'Orsay, Paris

"Young Man in the Costume of a Majo," Edouard Manet, 1863.

Manet hardly needs an introduction. But here he paints his brother in the costume of a majo, or lower-class Spanish dandy. Majos and majas would dress in exaggerated versions of traditional Spanish dress (like that impossibly broad sash!), be well mannered but cheeky, and sometimes would pick fights with the "Frenchified" upper classes who were abandoning traditional Spanish styles.

Dressing up as a majo or maja was a thrill for upper-crust Spaniards, though; Goya would paint a number of portraits of noblewomen as majas. The maja image itself, with comb and mantilla, flouncy dress and fan, became so iconic that it outlasted the majo style and became a cliche in its own right. The majo, sadly, has been replaced with the bullfighter.

I love his pose, and that snazzy outfits as a whole...but these days folks would be puzzled by a majo outfit at Halloween...

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

When I learned about Édouard Manet's "Olympia," the analysis focused on the parallel's to Titian's "Venus of Urbino" and the shocking nature of portraying a sex worker as the reclining nude. That was about it.

Being about to talk about Laure, the model for the maid, and the social commentary Manet is making by including a black model in this role, makes for such a fuller discussion I'm able to present to students today.

Today is the birthday of French artist, Édouard Manet (1832-1883), who is described as a "pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism".

This is 'Le Chemin de fer' from 1873

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edouard_Manet_-_Le_Chemin_de_fer_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg #realism #impressionism #manet #edouardmanet #painting