In today’s Art Blogmas, you can enjoy one of the first and most important modern paintings, Edouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass.
Art Blogmas 2021
Edouard Manet is often considered to be one of the first modern painters in art history. His famous painting Luncheon on the Grass is his great attempt to challenge the contemporary canons of realism in traditional art. Both the style and theme were completely shocking for society back then.
⤷ Read more: Impressionists in Paris
Edouard Manet: Luncheon on the Grass
⤷ Where is this painting? Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Edouard Manet painted his Luncheon on the Grass in 1862 and 1863. The painting was rejected by the Paris Salon, so Manet exhibited it at Salon de Refusés, which became a place to go for all those rejected painters to exhibit their recent work.
He painted two men accompanied by a naked woman and another one bathing in the background. The people presented in this painting and their communication, or the lack of it, make this painting so fascinating. Two young men are fully dressed and involved in a conversation, completely ignoring a naked woman next to them. However, she isn’t interested in them either. But, she’s staring at the viewer.
What’s the significance of that?
There are different explanations for it. Some researchers see completely different social statuses between them. Some are connecting this scene with the prostitution at the Bois de Boulogne, a large park in Paris where this scene is taking place. However, it could also be that Manet used a motif of a group of young people, who had a picnic together, had just finished bathing and are now relaxing in a park. He could also perhaps use it to show the contrast between the dark clothes of men with the lit nude woman’s body.
With visible brushstrokes and unusual light, the painting seems as it’s unfinished. That, and the fact that Manet used a large canvas, a format reserved for the historical or religious scenes, made this painting even more incomprehensible to his contemporaries.
However, as it is with many revolutionary paintings, it soon became one of the world masterpieces any art lover visiting Paris has on their bucket lists.
⤷ Read more: Impressionists at Musée d’Orsay
If you don’t want to miss other paintings I will share with you in this year’s Art Blogmas, be sure to check in here tomorrow at 7:30 am. Or, follow along on the Culture Tourist Facebook page and Instagram profile.