Edouard Manet

Édouard Manet was the most important and influential artist . He has long been associated with the Impressionists; he was certainly an important influence on them and he learned much from them himself. However, in recent years critics have acknowledged that he also learned from the Realism and Naturalism of his French contemporaries, and even from seventeenth century Spanish painting. This twin interest in Old Masters and contemporary Realism gave him the crucial foundation for his revolutionary approach. Manet's modernity lies above all in his eagerness to update older genres of painting by injecting new content or by altering the conventional elements.Rather than build up colors in layers, Manet would immediately lay down the hue that most closely matched the final effect he sought.His loose handling of paint, and his schematic rendering of volumes, led to areas of "flatness" in his pictures. In the artist's day, this flatness may have suggested popular posters or the artifice of painting - as opposed to its realism. Today, critics see this quality as the first example of "flatness" in modern art.

I love Manet for his use of colour in his works. The use of black in his paintings , gives his work a feel of elegancy in a way I find really intriguing. Manet painted people he knew.Some of my favourite works is, ‘A bar at the Folies-Bergère’, ‘Luncheon in the studio’, cause of his dark use of colour and the texture .

The bar at Folies Bergere

Luncheon in the studio

The Balcony