Realism · 1863
Édouard Manet 1832–1883
Musée d'Orsay · Paris
A nude woman picnics with two clothed men and stares straight out at us — the painting that announced modern art.
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Watch the first minute here. The full film, with the painter, the history and a close reading of the details, is in Hear Art.
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Chapter 1 of 7
What you are looking at caused one of the great scandals in the history of Western art. Paris, eighteen sixty-three. Édouard Manet submits this canvas to the Salon; it is rejected.
Shown instead at the Salon des Refusés, it provokes outrage — not because of nudity, but because the nude is undeniably a real woman in a real, modern forest.
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