In 1832 the artist Edouard Manet was born on this day. Here are 10 facts about him.
- He was born in a mansion. His father was a judge in Paris and the family was very well-off.
- Manet's father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and pursue a career in law, but Manet's uncle had taken him to art galleries and encouraged him to paint, and that is what the young Manet wanted to do for a living.
- As a compromise, Manet decided to join the Navy, but after failing the entrance exam twice, he was allowed to pursue his career in art.
- He married his piano teacher. His wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, was initially employed by Manet's father to teach Edouard and his brother Auguste to play the piano. It seems she probably taught them other things, too - it's thought she was having affairs with both of the brothers and her illegitimate son, Leon, born in 1853, who could have been Manet's son, or his nephew. Manet didn't marry her until 1863, the year after his father died.
- Whatever their relationship was, Leon was often painted by Manet. The most famous painting he is in is Boy Carrying a Sword, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
- Many artists in Manet's time concentrated on religious or historic themes. Although Manet painted a few such subjects in his early career, he much preferred to paint contemporary scenes of people enjoying themselves, or people he observed in the streets of Paris. This didn't always go down well with the critics. Who wants to look at a picture of a poor man drinking absinthe? they said. Manet himself commented, "One must be of one's time and paint what one sees."
- This isn't to say he wasn't influenced by religious and historic paintings, though. When he first started painting, he would copy works of the great masters he had seen in the Louvre. Some of his own paintings have been compared with works by Raphael or Titian.
- One of his most famous paintings was Dejeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) but it was deemed to controversial to be shown in Paris, because it showed two men and a naked woman having a picnic.
- In 1875, a book-length French edition of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven included lithographs by Manet.
- Manet's address book would have contained some very influential names, including Antonin Proust, Minister of Fine Arts, who was an old school friend, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot, who married one of his brothers.
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