Giorgione or Titian, Pastoral Concert, 1509. One work cited by scholars as an important precedent for Le déjeuner sur l’herbe is Giorgione’s The Tempest (or Titian’s) Pastoral Concert from 1509. At the same time, this composition reveals Manet’s study of the old Renaissance masters. The painting’s juxtaposition of fully dressed men and a nude woman was controversial, as was its abbreviated, sketch-like handling, an innovation that distinguished Manet from Courbet. Manet exhibited it at the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the Rejected) later in the year. The Paris Salon rejected The Luncheon on the Grass for exhibition in 1863. Music in the Tuileries, 1862: One of Manet’s earliest works that demonstrates his interest in loose bush strokes and the leisurely social activities of 19th century Parisians Inspired by Hals and Velázquez, it is a harbinger of his lifelong interest in the subject of leisure. Music in the Tuileries is an early example of Manet’s painterly style. Adopting the current style of realism initiated by Gustave Courbet, he painted The Absinthe Drinker (1858–59) and other contemporary subjects such as beggars, singers, Gypsies, people in cafés, and bullfights.
His style in this period was characterized by loose brush strokes, simplification of details, and the suppression of transitional tones. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art. His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass ( Le déjeuner sur l’herbe) and Olympia, engendered great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. One of the first 19th century artists to approach modern and postmodern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Édouard Manet (1832–1883) was a French painter. Impressionist painting characteristics include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), common, ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. Impressionism: A 19th century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists.juxtaposition: The extra emphasis given to a comparison when the contrasted objects are close together.Le déjeuner sur l'herbe - testimony to Manet's refusal to conform to convention and his initiation of a new freedom from traditional subjects and modes of representation - can perhaps be considered as the departure point for Modern Art. And the characters seem to fit uncomfortably in the sketchy background of woods from which Manet has deliberately excluded both depth and perspective. He made no transition between the light and dark elements of the picture, abandoning the usual subtle gradations in favour of brutal contrasts, thereby drawing reproaches for his "mania for seeing in blocks". In those days, Manet's style and treatment were considered as shocking as the subject itself. Manet himself jokingly nicknamed his painting "la partie carrée". This, and the contemporary dress, rendered the strange and almost unreal scene obscene in the eyes of the public of the day. The presence of a nude woman among clothed men is justified neither by mythological nor allegorical precedents. Yet in Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Manet was paying tribute to Europe's artistic heritage, borrowing his subject from the Concert champêtre – a painting by Titian attributed at the time to Giorgione ( Louvre) – and taking his inspiration for the composition of the central group from the Marcantonio Raimondi engraving after Raphael's Judgement of Paris.But the classical references were counterbalanced by Manet's boldness. Rejected by the jury of the 1863 Salon, Manet exhibited Le déjeuner sur l’herbe under the title Le Bain at the Salon des Refusés (initiated the same year by Napoléon III) where it became the principal attraction, generating both laughter and scandal.