The only exceptions are the additional female figure seen in the background and the pose of the middle male figure. Manet echoed every detail of gestures and poses of Raphael’s sitters, seen on the bottom right corner. What is also interesting about this work that caused such a controversy among the French society, is that, despite the contemporary setting of The Luncheon on the Grass, the composition was almost entirely borrowed from Raphael’s Judgment of Paris engraving (ca. See Manet’s breathtaking portrait of Irma Brunner. The fact that all of the individuals were recognizable and were depicted in an explicit narrative made this work impossible to exhibit along with traditional paintings approved by The French Academy. The man on the left is Ferdinand Leenhof, Manet’s brother in law, and the man on the right is the painter’s younger brother Eugene Manet. The model, probably for both of the female figures, was Victorine Meurent, who appeared frequently in other Manet’s paintings (most famously in Olympia, painted the same year). Manet would further exploit the difference between “nudity” and “nakedness” in his famous and infamous Olympia See Egon Schiele’s Sitting Nude with Yellow Blanket.Īll of the sitters and the woman in the background were real individuals. The two men sitting next to her seem to accept her nudity with proper respect and none of them is looking directly at her. She is a real modern woman who took her clothes off (you can clearly see two sleeves of her light blue polka-dot dress and her hat to the left of her) and is sitting with two fully dressed middle class men in a rural landscape! She is not ashamed of being naked as she gazes confidently at us. The nude looking at you is not a nymph, goddess or any other mythological creature. The controversy seen in this painting at the time was caused by the nude, or to be precise, by the context within which Manet depicted her. The Luncheon on the Grass, as it’s known in English, was painted in 1862 -63 and exhibited that same year at the Salons des Refusés, a non-mainstream exhibition space in Paris for works of art falling outside the requirements of the traditional Salon. The woman's hand is holding her chin as.“You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real.”Įdouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe belongs to a well-known genre of French paintings of the middle to late 19th century depicting people of all classes relaxing in the parks or th e countryside, often by a body of water. She has one leg drawn up and the other leg relaxed, lying down.

She looks quite comfortable the way she is sitting though. The men for example are reclining casually, while the way the women are sitting is also in an uninhibited manner, obviously not a way that a lady would regularly sit, especially in nude. Each character in this painting is sitting in a very relaxed manner. There is an atmosphere of informal familiarity in his work. The woman in the background bathing in the stream also seems ignorant or comfortable by the other nude woman sitting with the two men. Manet executed the characters in this painting like they were supernaturally present. They seem to not be at all astonished at the woman's presence by their posture and facial expressions. The two men accompanying the woman seem to be ignoring the woman as they are engaged in a deep conversation. The meaning of this piece of art that Edouard Manet intended was that just because a nude female is casually sitting beside two fully clothed men doesn't mean that the two men's attention will be towards the nude woman. Manet wanted the viewer's attention drawn directly towards the nude female's body. The female's body appears luminous and her gaze is directed towards the viewer. Influenced by the painting 'Judgment of Paris' by Raphael, Manet featured a naked woman with clothed men. Savaged by the critics, 'Luncheon on the Grass' caused a public scandal. While a nude in a classical setting was considered acceptable, one nude in a contemporary setting was not acceptable.

After painting 'Luncheon on the Grass' (1863) Manet received a great deal of media attention. He was an expert when it came to approaching modern-life subjects in his work, filling the gap between the art movement's realism and impressionism. Edouard Manet was a French painter who was born on Januand died on April 30, 1883.

Edouard manet luncheon on the grass