The art of Edouard Manet marks a real break with the past, in many ways he is the first modern painter. In his own times he was considered another Realist and shared with Courbet the notoriety of that movement. During the 1860's he became the leader of a new group of dissident artists, the so called Impressionists.

Courbet's primary concern was with subject matter; technically, his art went back to the seventeenth century. Manet, on the other hand, was much more concerned with technical effects, particularly natural light. What he painted was relatively unimportant, so long as it made an interesting arrangement of form and color. His subject was not a matter for social or moral uplift but rather what artists call a motif or arrangement. The logical conclusion of this attitude, which may be seen during our own time, is to ignore the subject completely, in favor of method and form.

The Realist was excited about his right to paint whatever he liked. The newer Impressionists, led at first by Manet, were interested in their right to paint however they liked. There was some scandal about two of Manet's pictures which were attacked on the ground of immorality (as well as method) . However, the bulk of Impressionist painting is a colorful and charming expression of the life of the big city and the suburbs around it. The paintings of Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, and others offer a new series of subjects derived from city life and handled in a vibrant and momentary fashion. They express the nature of metropolitan living in a quite different way from the solid bulky forms of Daumier and Courbet.

The Impressionist group was organized shortly after the Revolution of 1870. Since most people did not understand what they were trying to do, they were labeled subversive. The fact that Manet, Renoir, and others were nonpolitical, that Degas was a last-ditch conservative, and Cezanne a good Catholic, did not deter their attackers.

The "realism" of Manet shows the figure as it appears in natural light and in contrast to its background. His primary interest is the initial visual impression, what one sees in the first moment of looking at anything, when the eye has not yet had time to absorb the figure and give it roundness. Manet was first brought to public attention by the famous Luncheon on the Grass (below) . Today this painting is enshrined in the Louvre but in 1863 it was the subject of violent attack. It was rejected for the official salon of that year, together with a number of other works, and by the order of Louis Napoleon was put into the "Salon of the Refused."

Since it brought together in one space a nude young woman with two clothed young men and a half dressed girl in the background it could be attacked on the ground of immorality. Conservative critics found it easy to incite the public against such a picture. It was, they admitted, very much like the Pastoral Concert of Giorgione in the Louvre but "not idealized." This in itself made it a criminal offense. To add insult to injury, there was an undecorated mess of half-eaten food at the lower left hand corner of the picture. The traditionalists were further enraged because Manet, in his search for a natural light effect, had developed an altogether new technique.

The artists of the past had worked from a dark under painting to a series of highlights. They added glaze after glaze in order to achieve the illusion of form. Manet felt that the results of this system could never be natural and bright enough. He therefore turned the method upside down and began with a bright under-painting as his first coat. He added a series of half dark's and dark's as he went along, while the brightly colored background was still wet. This often gave the result of charging his canvas with light since the under-painting would reflect light back into the eye of the spectator.

Besides this revolutionary approach, the people in the picture are shown almost without shadow. They are flat silhouetted forms momentarily visualized as the eye of the spectator catches them. This also agitated the entrenched salon artists, as was indicated by the reception accorded Manet's celebrated Olympia (below) two years later. Here a flatly modeled, brilliantly lighted nude looks straight at the audience, while her maid brings the daily bunch of flowers from her protector. Actual physical attacks were made on the picture and Manet had to leave the country for a while.

When he returned, Emile Zola, then a budding young journalist, singled out his The Fifer (below) for special praise. It was a courageous thing to do even though this painting reveals the heritage from Velasquez and Goya. This is apparent in the flatness of visualization and the contrast between the figure and the background against which it is silhouetted. As in the works of the Spaniards, only the face and the hands are given the benefit of modeling. The rest of the body is left relatively flat, as indeed it would look at the first moment.

The picture is also remarkable for its elegant decorative form. It suggests the suavity and charm of Persian miniatures, both in the brilliant color effects and in the way the figure has been reduced to an abstract pattern swinging right and left. Emotional content is relatively unimportant. This "art for art's sake" attitude anticipates many twentieth-century masters to whom the motif and its handling are the significant element, not the subject or its feelings.