One cannot deny that Manet’s work greatly varied. The portrait of M. Faure, in the character of Hamlet, was to a certain extent conventional studio-painting, and could offend nobody. The subject would not provoke the most susceptible. M. Faure was celebrated on the stage of the Grand Opera, possessed considerable wealth, and was one of Manet’s most devoted friends. Nana, sent to the Salon together with the portrait of M. Faure, was rejected. The technique was brilliant, but the subject, although harmless enough, suggested Zola’s heroine. Zola’s book was not published until 1879, but the name designated a class apart.
In 1880 Manet exhibited a wonderful portrait of M. Antonin Proust, and in the December of the following year his old friend, now Directeur des Beaux-Arts, was able to give to his life-long companion the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Had Manet no friends at Court, he would certainly not have received this coveted decoration. President Grévy objected when he saw the painter’s name, and would have struck out Manet from the list had not Gambetta exerted some little pressure.
But the struggle was nearly ended. Manet was dying. “This war to the knife has done me much harm,” he is reported to have told Antonin Proust. “I have suffered from it greatly, but it has whipped me up.... I would not wish that any artist should be praised and covered with adulation at the outset, for that means the annihilation of his personality.”
On New Year’s Day, 1882, he received the Cross, and at the Salon exhibited Un Bar aux Folies-Bergères, a barmaid enshrined amidst her glasses at a Paris music-hall, and a portrait, Jeanne. Since 1879 paralysis had been slowly sapping his powers. Edouard Manet died near Paris on April 30, 1883, at the early age of fifty-one. Disappointment, injured pride, lack of appreciation, continued and strong hostility, each had had its effect upon a physique always sensitive and never too strong. The artist had died for his art.
A GARDEN IN RUEIL · EDOUARD MANET
FISHING · EDOUARD MANET
The secret of Manet’s power is sincerity and individuality; his main effort was a rendering of fact; his deepest interest the truthful juxtaposition of values, the broad and simple treatment of planes, combined with a constant search for the character of the person or object portrayed.
The influences which guided Manet during the earlier portion of his career have been noticed at length. He travelled extensively, and his works bear many souvenirs of foreign masters. But sufficient stress is not always laid upon the influences at work around Manet in Paris, namely, the influences of Delacroix, Corot, and the men of 1830, who carried but one stage farther the methods and tradition of the English masters, Constable, Bonington, Girtin and Turner.