Tag Archives: Édouard Manet

A nude in my garden – Le déjeuner sur l’herbe

Nude In The GardenI have always wanted to paint a version of ‘Le déjeuner sur l’herbe’ this is my photographic version.

Edouard Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe (a large oil on canvas, during 1862 and 1863) caused a big stir at the Salon des Refusés in Paris, having been rejected by the Salon jury of 1863. Manet seized the opportunity to exhibit this and two other paintings, at the 1863 exhibition and reveled in the public notoriety and controversy that followed.

The painting has historic and pastoral overtones, depicting the juxtaposition of a female nude and a scantily dressed female bather on a picnic with two fully dressed men in a rural setting. This painting references previous works of art by Titian (c.1487–1576) and Giorgione (c.1476–1510). The piece is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. A smaller, earlier version can be seen at the Courtauld Gallery, London.

The image above was created using 35mm negatives that had been taken using a Pentax SP1000 that was previously owned by my late father. The photographs were taken in 1981 and 2012.

Bow Wow Wow‘s version of the same painting:

Famously, coinciding with Annabella Lwin’s posing for album cover work, her mother alleged exploitation of a minor for immoral purposes, and instigated a Scotland Yard investigation. As a result the band was only allowed to leave the UK after McLaren promised not to promote Lwin as a “sex kitten”. This included an agreement to not use a nude photograph depicting Lwin as the woman in The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l’herbe), though the picture was used as the cover of the band’s 1982 RCA EP  The Last of the Mohicans, which became their best-selling album in the U.S.

Related articles

I have always loved the drawings of Degas. The way he portrayed women, sensually and simply is to be admired. In the late 1880s, Degas also developed a passion for photography and this new skill influenced the composition of his paintings… Continue reading

Royal Academy of Arts

‘Manet: Portraying Life’ has been organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in collaboration with the Toledo Museum of Art and is the first ever retrospective devoted to the portraiture of Edouard Manet. The exhibition consists of more than 50 of his works, a vast number of which were ‘never exhibited in his lifetime’ (and maybe should never have been exhibited).

Born into an upper class household with strong political connections, Manet rejected the future originally envisioned for him, and became engrossed in the world of painting. He married Suzanne Leenhoff in 1863. The last 20 years of Manet’s life saw him form bonds with other great artists of the time, and develop his own style that would be heralded as innovative and serve as a major influence for future painters.

Manet’s ‘Olympia’ is one of my all time favorite paintings but…

If you were not already familiar with Manet’s painting I think you would get the wrong impression from this exhibition – the quality of the majority of the paintings is ‘second rate’ at best and most definitely not typical of his work.  This exhibition has done him a massive injustice, threatening his status as an important innovator. He is one of the greatest artists ever but this exhibition portrays him as a mediocre one – a massive shame.

I think you have to view this exhibition as ‘work in progress’ or ‘paintings to be resolved’.

The painting of  Berthe Morisot  is one of the ‘stars’ of the show and does the man credit. Morisot herself is credited with convincing Manet to attempt plein air painting, she also  became his sister-in-law when she married his brother, Eugene…

Unlike the core Impressionist group, Manet maintained that modern artists should seek to exhibit at the Paris Salon rather than abandon it in favor of independent exhibitions. Nevertheless, when Manet was excluded from the International Exhibition of 1867, he set up his own exhibition. His mother worried that he would waste all his inheritance on this project, which was enormously expensive. While the exhibition earned poor reviews from the major critics, it also provided his first contacts with several future Impressionist painters, including Degas.

I wish I’d painted this (maybe?)

Manet’s Olympia (which is in the Musée d’Orsay) is an important painting. In 1974 at Stourbridge College of Art I did a series of paintings based on ‘Page 3 models’ and I was intrigued how Manet’s Olympia … Continue reading ?

Related articles