Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet scandalised Paris twice and refused to exhibit with the Impressionists he had inspired. Born in Paris in 1832 to a senior judge who intended him for the law, he twice failed the naval examination, served on a training voyage to Rio, and was allowed to study painting instead, spending six years under Thomas Couture and quarrelling with him constantly. He copied Velázquez, Goya and Hals in the Louvre and in Spain, and their handling — direct, tonal, with black used as a colour — shaped everything he did. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, rejected by the Salon and shown at the Salon des Refusés in 1863, put a naked woman looking directly at the viewer beside two clothed men in modern dress. The composition was taken from a Raphael via an engraving; the outrage was that the nude was not a goddess but a recognisable Parisian. Olympia, painted the same year and shown in 1865, was worse. A courtesan reclines with her hand firmly over herself, wearing a ribbon and one slipper, attended by a black maid with flowers from a client, and stares out unashamed. Guards were posted to protect the canvas. He painted with flat areas and abrupt tonal transitions rather than modelled gradation, which critics called crude and which is the beginning of modern painting. He was a friend of Degas, Monet and Berthe Morisot, who married his brother, and lightened his palette under their influence — but he wanted the Salon's recognition and would not join their independent exhibitions. He died in 1883 at fifty-one of complications of syphilis after a leg amputation.

• Lived: 1832 CE – 1883 CE
• Nationality: French
• Roles: painter