Manet [antikvár]

View of the International Exhibition, 1867. Canvas 43" x 79" National Gallery, Oslo X, -owards the middle of the ip*" century, Courbet claimed to have replaced so-called "classic" academism, and the fervent imaginative flights of Romanticism, by "realism". In fact, his originality lay, not in his technique nor in his way of looking at the world, but quite simply in the subjects he selected. He thus irritated his audience without surprising it. Manet, on the other hand, showed the true image of modern existence, and this image shocked. He set himself the task of painting people, places and things, not as people were accustomed to seeing them represented, but exactly as he himself saw them. From the moment he felt sure of his own maturity, he put no memory of the techniques and the compositions of the past between his own vision and nature. From this sprang his rapidity of execution and his bold contrasts of harsh highlights and deep shadows. His pictures were so new as to be scandalous. He overturned all the accepted ideas about what was then called painting. Yet, while his career unfolded, enormous changes took place in the social and political ideas which had until then been accepted. A new era began, and Manet's means of pictorial expression seemed to echo it. However, it was only by chance that he painted themes which seemed contemporary. If, as sometimes occurred, contemporary events put something before him, some immediate and exciting idea, he made use of this as a reporter might. But it happened only rarely. As far as we know, Manet never (except during the war of 1870) made allusion, either in his letters or in conversation, to the very considerable events which were then agitating the Governments and Chancelleries of Europe.