Edouard Manet: The Great Works

A handsome new volume devoted to the most important works by Manet, a pivotal figure in Impressionism and widely considered the first of the modern artists.With over 100 seminal paintings, this book celebrates the artist who bridged the transition from Realism to Impressionism and is seen as giving rise to Modernism.Combining painterly technique with strikingly modern images of contemporary life, much of Manet’s work documented daily life in Paris, depicting scenes ranging from the recently built boulevards with their sidewalk cafes, industrial marvels such as the railways, and pleasure grounds ranging from newly landscaped parks to horse racing. He also painted provocative scenes of the demimonde in popular bars and cabarets.Included here are popular and iconic works such as Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe, with its shocking juxtaposition of a nude woman amid fully dressed men, and Olympia, Manet’s modern reworking of Titian’s Venus of Urbino that Parisian society initially rejected as scandalous.Little has been published on Manet recently, so this comprehensive survey is long overdue. His bold style, muscular brushwork, frank subject matter, and compositions that pushed boundaries and confronted societal norms continue to influence and inspire today’s young artists.