THE LUNCHEON ON THE GRASS

'''The Luncheon on the Grass''' ''(Le déjeuner sur l'herbe)'', originally titled ''The Bath'' ''(Le Bain)'', is an oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet. Painted between 1862 and 1863 it measures 208 by 264.5 centimetres (81.9 x 104.5 in). The juxtaposition of a female nude with fully dressed men sparked controversy when the work was first exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863. The piece is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Contents

Description

Influences

References

Books

Description

In 1863, Manet shocked the French public by exhibiting his Déjeuner sur l'Herbe ("Luncheon on the Grass"). It is not a Realist painting in the social or political sense of Daumier, but it is a statement in favor of the artist's individual freedom. The shock value of a nude woman casually lunching with two fully dressed men, which was an affront to the propriety of the time, was accentuated by the recognizability of the figures. The nude, Manet's model Victorine Meurend, whose body is starkly lit, stares directly at the viewer. The two men are Manet's brother Gustave and his future brother in law, Ferdinand Leenhoff. They are dressed like dandies. The men seem to be engaged in conversation, ignoring the woman. In front of them, the woman's clothes, a basket of fruit, and a round loaf of bread are displayed, as in a still life. In the background a lightly clad woman wades in a stream. Too large in comparison with the figures in the foreground, she seems to float. The roughly painted background lacks depth — giving the viewer the impression that the scene is not taking place outdoors, but in a studio. This impression is reinforced by the use of broad "photographic" light, which casts almost no shadows: in fact, the lighting of the scene is inconsistent and unnatural. The man on the right wears a flat hat with a tassel, of a kind normally used only indoors.
Manet's wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, and his favorite model, Victorine Meurent, both posed for the nude woman, which has Meurent's face, but Leenhoff's plumper body. The man on the left is probably Manet's brother-in-law Rodolphe Leenhoff.
The style of the painting breaks with the academic traditions of the time. Manet used a harsh, "photographic" light that eliminates mid-tones. He did not try to hide the brush strokes: indeed, the painting looks unfinished in some parts of the scene. The nude is a far cry from the smooth, flawless figures of Cabanel or Ingres.
Despite the mundane subject, Manet deliberately chose a large canvas size, normally reserved for grander subjects.

Influences

Manet's composition reveals his study of the old masters, as the disposition of the main figures is derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving Urteil des Paris (c. 1515) after his copy from a drawing by Raphael.^[1]
Some scholars also cite''The Tempest'', a famous Renaissance painting also features a fully dressed man and a nude female in a rural setting, as an important precedent for Manet's painting ''Le déjeuner sur l'herbe.''^[2]

References

1. Ross King. ''The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism''. New York: Waller & Company, 2006 ISBN 0802714668.
2. John Rewald,''The History of Impressionism'', The Museum of Modern Art, 4th revised edition 1973, (1st 1946, 2nd 1955, 3rd 1961), p.85. ISBN 0-87070-369-2.

Books

★ Ross King. ''The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism''. New York: Waller & Company, 2006 ISBN 0-8027-1466-8. Pages 49-51, 86-89.