He has been called an Apostle of Classicalism. Taught first by Baron Gros, who vacillated from one school to the other, and afterwards by Delaroche, who endeavoured to reconcile the opposing parties, Couture could hardly have taken any other position in the art world of the ’forties. “He was apart among the painters of the day, as far removed from the cold academic school as from the new art just then making its way, with Delacroix at its head. The famous quarrel between the Classical and Romantic camps left him indifferent. He was of too independent a nature to follow any chief, however great.” This is the testimony of an American artist, Mr. P. A. Healy, who studied under Couture about the time Manet was in the atelier, and shows that the future Impressionist worked under a man by no means curbed by tradition. According to his pupil, Couture’s great precept was, “Look at Nature; copy Nature.” Manet’s doctrine was couched in almost the same words, “Do nothing without consulting Nature.”
We know that during the time Manet remained in Couture’s studio, master and pupil quarrelled incessantly. The reason usually given is that Manet would not respect tradition. But neither would Couture. “That in the captain’s but a choleric word, which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.” One was there to teach, the other to be taught. The temperaments of the two men were fundamentally different. The thick-set, scowling Couture, of shoemaker descent, would naturally rub against the grain of the rather dandified young scion of the magistrature. Couture hated the middle classes, and Manet belonged to the “haute bourgeoisie.” Manet’s family was legal to the bone, and Couture detested lawyers even more than he disliked doctors. With all these drawbacks Couture was admittedly the best teacher in Paris. Manet evidently recognised the advantage, for he remained in the studio for six years, until he was twenty-five years of age, although quite able to sever the connection had he wished.
Then came the “wanderjahre,” which commenced in 1856. Manet visited Germany, Holland, and Italy. In the Low Countries, Franz Hals exerted a great and permanent influence over the student; Rembrandt was copied in Germany; in Italy, Titian and Tintoretto received his homage. Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Munich, Venice and Florence were visited. Upon his return to Paris he copied assiduously in the Louvre, and it was in this wonderful gallery that he so thoroughly mastered all that a young painter could learn from the Spanish School. He did not visit Madrid until 1865. His Spanish subjects before that date were the result of a careful study of Velazquez and Goya in the National Collection and the visit of an Iberian troupe of players to Paris. In the Louvre he copied paintings by Velazquez, Titian, and Tintoretto.
Of living artists Courbet considerably influenced the first period of Manet’s activity. Ever on the fringe of Impressionism, although never in the group, Courbet was a romantically inclined realist who taught the younger men to turn to everyday life for their subjects. His canvases were full of colour; although they have sadly toned down in the course of time, owing to the curious and unsuccessful experiments he made in trying to combine his practice with his theories.
In 1859 Manet sent his work for the first time to the Salon. The Absinthe Drinker, strong, but reminiscent of Courbet, was rejected. The Salon was held every two years, and in 1861 both his contributions were accepted, one being a double portrait of his father and mother, the other a Spanish study called the Guitarero. For this Manet was awarded Honourable Mention, his first and almost his final official distinction, for he received no other until the year before his death, twenty-one years later. Working with tremendous energy in his studio in the Rue Lavoisier, Manet became the centre of a circle of friends which included Legros, Bracquemond, Jongkind, Monet, Degas, Fantin-Latour, Harpignies, and Whistler. The Guitar-player was an undoubted success. “Caramba,” writes genial Theo. Gautier, “Velazquez would greet this fellow with a friendly little wink, and Goya would hand him a pipe for his papelito.” Upon the jury it is said that Ingres himself was flattering, and the mention honorable was ascribed to the lead of Delacroix. Couture’s sneer that Manet would become merely the Daumier of 1860 did not seem likely to be justified.
Manet was now engaged upon several pictures which must not be ignored. Music at the Tuileries (1861), refused at the Salon, was, as its name implies, an open-air study of the fashionable crowds gathered round the bandstand in the lovely gardens by the palace. The Street Singer is the earliest of the almost realistic renderings of everyday life which the Impressionists delighted in. A sad-faced girl (a well-known character of the day) standing with a guitar at a street corner; the type is the same to this hour both in London and Paris, one of the thousand wretched beings superfluous to a great city, at once its pleasure and its sport.
The Boy with a Sword, now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, also belongs to this period. The picture is masterly. Inspired from Spain, it is, like most great paintings, full of simplicity, full of strength. The Old Musician is also extremely Spanish, with a haunting reminiscence of Los Borrachos by Velazquez (although Manet had not yet directly seen this canvas). A small group watches an old man about to play his fiddle. Some boys, a little girl with a doll (a figure very dear to Manet), a man drinking, a native of the Orient in a turban and a long robe, these form a straggling composition. The picture is a fantasy of a nation the painter loved but had never yet seen.
Two personal matters affected the life of Manet about this time. His father died, leaving him a considerable private fortune, thus making the artist financially independent of dealers and the ups and downs of public exhibition. In 1863 he married Mlle. Suzanne Leenhoff, a Dutch lady of great musical talent. From one point of view 1863 was disastrous, from another triumphant. Hitherto a man of promise, Manet now developed into a man of notoriety.
The little “one-man show” at the gallery of M. Martinet, Boulevard des Italiens, presaged the coming storm. Manet exhibited the Spanish Ballet, Music at the Tuileries, Lola de Valence, and nearly the whole of his other work up to that date. Baudelaire was enthusiastic. Verses on Lola de Valence are enshrined in “Fleurs de Mal.” Other critics were not so kind. M. Paul Mantz did not restrain his pen and referred to “a struggle between noisy, plastery tones, and black,” with a result “hard, sinister, and deadly,” the whole summed up as “a caricature of colour.”
The Salon of 1863, which followed, has become famous not through what it accepted, but by reason of what it refused. In a contemporary chronicle the most notable pictures of the exhibition are La Prière au Désert by Gustave Guillaumet, a Sainte Famille by Bouguereau, La Déroute by Gustave Boulanger, La Bataille de Solférino by Meissonier, and the Chasse au Renard by Courbet. With the exception of Courbet it is an academical list, although it is extraordinary how Courbet crept in.