second french empireconcept:era modern
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
Oil on canvas (1863) by Édouard Manet, depicting two clothed men and a nude woman picnicking in a forest. Rejected by the Salon, exhibited at the Salon des Refusés (1863) where it caused a public scandal. Considered the first major work of modern art for its direct challenge to academic conventions.
Scholarly Significance
Founding scandal of modern painting. Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) anchors the Realism-Impressionism transition, the challenge to academic nude conventions, and the Salon des Refusés historical context.
Notes
- ·Édouard Manet submitted this work as 'Le Bain' (The Bath) to the Salon jury in 1863; it was rejected.
- ·Exhibited at the Salon des Refusés (a special exhibition of rejected works ordered by Napoleon III) in May 1863; it provoked intense controversy.
- ·The composition references Raphael's Judgment of Paris (known through Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving) and Giorgione's Fête champêtre — but the nude figure stares directly out at the viewer while two casually clothed contemporarily-dressed men converse, creating a jarring juxtaposition of the ideal and the modern.
- ·The nude model was Victorine Meurent (Manet's frequent model); the male figures are Manet's brother Gustave and his future brother-in-law Ferdinand Leenhoff.
- ·Emperor Napoleon III reportedly called it 'an offence against modesty'.
- ·Zola championed Manet and the painting as the vanguard of modern realism.
- ·Donated to the Louvre by Moreau-Nélaton in 1906; now at Musée d'Orsay.