MANET
We must close this necessarily fragmentary survey of French art at the Louvre with the mention of Edouard Manet (1832–1883), whose Olympia (No. 613a, [Plate LIII.]) is the first, and so far the only painting of the Impressionist school that has gained access to this gallery. It was formerly exhibited at the Luxembourg. Hung as it is now in Gallery VIII. amid the works of David, Gros, Ingres, Delacroix, Delaroche, and other early nineteenth-century painters, this Olympia fully explains the sensation, but certainly not the indignation, caused by its first appearance at the Salon of 1865. It sings out with such brilliant purity of colour and is so emphatic in the patterning of its design, so daring in the placing side by side of almost unmodulated but infallibly accurate colour masses, that everything around appears more or less dingy and artificial. Manet’s Olympia marks the dawn of a new era, not because it is based on a revolutionary rejection of tradition, but because it is true to the spirit of the best tradition, which is not carried on by literal and mechanical imitation, but by evolution and adaptation to modern life and thought.
PLATE LIII.—ÉDOUARD MANET
(1832–1883)
No. 613a.—OLYMPIA
A nude woman, with blue-edged yellow satin slippers on her feet, a narrow black riband round her neck, and a gold bracelet on her right arm, is reclining on a bed, her right arm resting on the cushion. Beneath her is spread a yellowish, flowered Indian shawl. A black cat with raised tail stands at her feet on the bed. Behind the bed is seen a negress, who brings a large bouquet of flowers to her mistress.
Signed on left:—“ed. manet, 1865.”
Painted in oil on canvas.
4 ft. 2 in. × 6 ft. 3 in. (1·27 × 1·90.)