Édouard Manet

In 1863 the Salon jury refused Manet's large Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, a nude woman seated with clothed contemporary men in a landscape. On Napoleon III's order the refused artists were allowed to show at the Palais de l'Industrie, and the picture, catalogued as 'Le Bain', drew a clamour of disapproval. In 1865 the Salon accepted Olympia, a nude Parisian woman in place of a conventional goddess, together with Jésus insulté par les soldats; Duret reports that it was mocked in the press and in caricature, and Proust that the Salon administration took precautions to protect the canvas.

In 1867-68 Manet painted L'Exécution de Maximilien, a large picture of the shooting of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico at Querétaro on 19 June 1867. Duret notes that it is the one work of his showing a scene he had not seen: Manet gathered the circumstances and details of the event, posed a squad of soldiers lent from a barracks as the firing party, and painted it in three successive versions.

Un bar aux Folies-Bergère was his main picture at the Salon of 1882, the last Salon in which he exhibited. A barmaid faces the viewer with a mirror behind her showing her talking to a man and the hall; on the bar are bottles and fruit painted in bright, contrasting colour. Duret reports that critics found the arrangement of the mirror incomprehensible.

Duret writes that Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne and Sisley started from the light-toned painting for which Manet had set the example and went on to what came to be called Impressionism; Castagnary, reviewing the Salon of 1875, called Manet head of a school with an incontestable influence on a group of artists. Manet did not take part in the Impressionists' first group exhibition of 1874, according to Hourticq, because he thought it necessary to force the doors of the Salon.

In 1867 the Exposition universelle jury refused Manet, so he had a wooden pavilion built near the Alma bridge, on ground he obtained permission to use, and showed about fifty of his pictures there in May. The catalogue opened with a notice that said he did not mean to protest, only to show 'sincere works', and that showing was the way to find friends and allies. Duret and Hourticq report that the public and the press ridiculed the exhibition and that few visitors came; Courbet had built a similar pavilion nearby.

Putting on the exhibition himself once the jury refused him is consistent with proactive agency; Hourticq also notes that this kind of show was burdensome for his means. Proactive Agency

In 1875 Manet wrote to Duret that he had found Claude Monet at Argenteuil dejected and almost penniless. He proposed that the two of them buy ten to twenty of Monet's pictures at 100 francs each, 500 francs apiece, without Monet learning who was behind it, because a dealer or collector might refuse. Duret, who reprints the letter, notes that Manet was himself short of money and that the dealer Durand-Ruel, the only one who had bought such work, could not help at that moment.

In 1863 the Salon jury refused Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, as it had refused his Absinthe Drinker in 1859. When Napoleon III allowed the refused artists to exhibit separately, Manet's large canvas was among the most noticed; Duret reports a clamour of disapproval, and Proust that the court declared it an offence against decency after the Emperor stopped in front of it. Manet had painted Olympia the same year, which Duret treats as a complement to the picture, and showed it at the Salon of 1865.

Following the refusal with a second challenging nude two years later is consistent with persistence; Duret adds that the public's hostile view of him, once set in 1863, lasted for years. Persistence