ÉDOUARD MANET AND “THE (FEMALE) NUDE” Unlike his predecessor, Gustave Courbet who carefully directed the critical discourse around his art, Édouard Manet was far more taciturn. When he spoke, it was in fragments, causal remarks, rarely buttressed by explanations...
ÉDOUARD MANET AND THE SALON Part One Like the career of Gustave Courbet, the career of Édouard Manet breaks into two segments. As with all aspiring artists, Manet had to make his mark, and he chose to call attention to himself through a series of paintings that...
Art-for-Art’s-Sake in Context In the Salon of 1846, the poet and art critic, Charles Baudelaire argued that average people (in modern clothes) were as heroic as any Roman heroes of ancient times. In the waning days of the July Monarchy, the Greco-Roman legends...
THE RISE AND FALL OF GUSTAVE COURBET Part Two The early career of Gustave Courbet is discussed within the historical context of class struggles during the middle of the nineteenth century. The Realism in Courbet’s paintings of the 1850s manifested itself not...
AVANT-GARDE REALISM IN FRANCE: GUSTAVE COURBET In 1845, The art critic, Théophile Thoré (who “discovered” the Dutch artist, Jan Vermeer) complained that French art was “…without system, without direction, and abandoned to individual fantasy.”...
THE PAINTER OF MODERN LIFE Like many writers before and after him, Baudelaire wrote without specific commission, on “spec” as it were. This essay on Constantin Guys, an illustrator for the Illustrated London News, was actually written in 1860 and would not be...
