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| Portrait of Édouard Manet Henri Fantin-Latour, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
Discover the life and art of Édouard Manet, the French painter who inspired Impressionism. Explore analyses of his famous paintings (Olympia, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère), where to see his works today, and how much his art is worth on the global market.
Édouard Manet (1832–1883) stands as one of the most pivotal figures in Western art history. He occupies a fascinating position: not quite an Impressionist himself, yet widely considered the catalyst who made Impressionism possible.
His bold choices in subject matter, composition, and technique redefined painting in the 19th century. Manet shocked his contemporaries, fascinated younger artists, and helped to redefine what art could be: not myth, not allegory, but the pulse of modern life.
Often labeled a “French Impressionist painter” in popular conversation, Manet actually resisted belonging to any movement. He never joined the Impressionist exhibitions, preferring the official Salon, but he was admired by the Impressionists and inspired them deeply. Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir all looked to Manet as the model of artistic courage. Today, his work is held in the world’s leading museums, his paintings are studied as the foundation of modern art, and his canvases command record-breaking sums on the global art market.
This essay, and composition, will provide a comprehensive overview of Manet’s life and work, focusing especially on his greatest paintings—including Olympia, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, The Railway, The Fifer, The Spanish Singer, and The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. We will also look at where these paintings are exhibited today and how Manet’s art is valued in the market.
The Life of Édouard Manet
Manet was born in Paris in 1832 into an affluent, cultured family. His father was a high-ranking official in the French Ministry of Justice, and his mother was connected to the diplomatic elite. The young Manet was expected to pursue a respectable career, but he resisted, drawn instead to art. His parents first hoped he would join the navy, but after failing the entrance exam, he was allowed to study painting.
Manet trained under Thomas Couture, a painter known for historical and allegorical scenes, but quickly rejected his teacher’s academic approach. From the beginning, Manet preferred directness and immediacy. He traveled widely, studying Spanish masters like Velázquez and Goya, as well as Italian Renaissance painters, but when he returned to Paris, his eyes were fixed on the modern city itself—its boulevards, parks, music halls, and working people.
By the early 1860s, Manet was producing works that would both scandalize and inspire. He was not interested in flattering portraits or grand historical myths. Instead, he painted Paris as it was, stripped of sentimentality and unvarnished in its realism. His brushwork was bold, his compositions unconventional, and his subjects controversial.
Manet’s Modern Vision: Painting the Present
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| Jeanne (Spring) Édouard Manet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
Even more provocative, he painted them in a way that exposed the mechanics of painting itself: brushstrokes visible, space compressed, and black used as a vibrant color instead of a shadow. To many critics, this was unfinished or even crude. To younger artists, it was revolutionary.
The Impressionists—Monet, Renoir, Morisot, Degas—would soon take his lessons further, painting en plein air with rapid brushstrokes to capture fleeting light. Yet it was Manet who first dared to put modern Paris on canvas in all its immediacy.
Manet’s Masterpieces: Nine Key Paintings
1) Olympia (1863)
Where to see it: Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Few paintings in art history have caused as much scandal as Olympia. Exhibited in 1865, it portrays a reclining nude woman, unabashedly modern, staring directly at the viewer. Unlike the soft, idealized Venuses of tradition, Olympia is unapologetically real: a courtesan, identifiable by her accessories—the orchid in her hair, the choker on her neck, and the black cat at her feet.
The audacity lay not in the nudity but in the gaze. Olympia refuses passivity; she confronts the viewer as an equal. The painting shocked Parisian audiences, who accused Manet of indecency, but younger artists hailed it as a declaration of modern truth.
Today, Olympia hangs in the Musée d’Orsay and is considered one of the most important paintings of the 19th century.
2) Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) (1863)
Where to see it: Musée d’Orsay, Paris
If Olympia scandalized with nudity, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe did so with context. Inspired by Renaissance pastoral scenes, Manet transported the composition to a Parisian park, where a nude woman picnics casually with two clothed men.
The figures’ lack of mythological disguise was shocking. Critics saw it as vulgar, a blatant depiction of prostitution and male privilege. Yet the painting’s brilliance lay in its flat, abrupt contrasts, its play of scale (the background bather seems too large), and its collision of art history with modernity.
This painting was rejected by the Salon and shown instead at the infamous Salon des Refusés in 1863, where it made Manet a household name.
3) A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)
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| A Bar at the Folies-Bergere 1882 Édouard Manet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
Where to see it: The Courtauld Gallery, London
One of Manet’s final masterpieces, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère captures the dazzling nightlife of Paris.
A barmaid stands before us, surrounded by bottles and fruit, yet behind her a vast mirror reflects the crowded music hall. The reflection is deliberately skewed, unsettling our sense of perspective.
What makes this painting haunting is the expression of the barmaid: weary, detached, lost in thought. She is both on display and isolated, a metaphor for the transactional nature of modern urban life.
This canvas remains one of the most analyzed paintings in art history, embodying both spectacle and alienation in the modern city.
4) The Railway (Gare Saint-Lazare) (1873)
Where to see it: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
In this work, Manet depicts a young woman seated beside a child who gazes at the smoke of passing trains behind an iron fence. Unlike Monet’s vibrant series of the Gare Saint-Lazare, Manet avoids spectacle, instead focusing on pause and waiting.
The iron bars act as both a physical and symbolic boundary: between the viewer and modern industry, between stillness and movement. It is a portrait of Paris as much as it is a portrait of its people.
5) The Fifer (1866)
Where to see it: Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Here Manet presents a young military musician standing flat against a plain background. The simplicity is deceptive: the figure is bold, the blacks intense, the contours sharp. Influenced by both Spanish painting and Japanese prints, the image looks almost like a poster.
This painting baffled critics for its flatness, but it influenced generations of artists who embraced bold silhouettes and color contrasts.
6) The Spanish Singer (1860)
Where to see it: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
An early success, this painting of a guitar player in Spanish costume won Manet praise at the 1861 Salon. Its theatricality reflects Manet’s love of Spanish culture, but its brushwork already shows his shift away from academic polish.
This was the canvas that first announced Manet’s unique style and helped launch his public career.
7) The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1867–69)
Where to see it: Kunsthalle Mannheim (Germany), with fragments in London
In this monumental canvas, Manet depicts the firing squad execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, installed by Napoleon III. The scene is chilling: the soldiers are anonymous, the rifles form a mechanical wall, and Maximilian is rendered with tragic simplicity.
The painting was politically controversial, critical of French imperial policy, and was initially suppressed. Today, the surviving versions are divided among museums, but together they represent one of Manet’s most powerful statements on contemporary politics.
Claude Monet painting in his studio boat
Édouard Manet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
8) Boating (1874)
Édouard Manet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Where to see it: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Maneuvering with grace and skill, a couple glides along the tranquil waters of the Seine in Édouard Manet's captivating 1874 painting, Boating.
This masterpiece, housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is a testament to Manet's innovative approach to art.
Manet's deep appreciation for Japanese prints is evident in the work's deliberate flattening of perspective, a technique that creates a sense of immediacy and decorative elegance.
Music in the Tuileries {{PD-US}}
Édouard Manet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
9) Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862)
Édouard Manet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Where to see it: National Gallery, London, and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane
This lively canvas shows Parisians enjoying an outdoor concert in the Tuileries Gardens. It is both a scene of modern leisure and a group portrait: Manet included himself and his friends among the crowd.
This is one of the earliest examples of Manet’s commitment to painting contemporary life on a monumental scale.
Manet and Impressionism: A Complicated Relationship
Although often grouped with the Impressionists, Manet was not one of them in practice. He refused to exhibit in their independent shows, preferring the official Salon, and he valued his independence too highly to be tied to a collective.
Yet Impressionism would not have existed without him. Manet’s embrace of modern subjects, bold brushwork, and flattened compositions laid the foundation for Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Morisot. Berthe Morisot, in particular, was both a close friend and a key interpreter of Manet’s ideas.
Where to See Manet Today
Manet’s masterpieces are housed in the most prestigious collections worldwide:
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Musée d’Orsay (Paris): Olympia, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, The Fifer
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The Courtauld Gallery (London): A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
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National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC): The Railway
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Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York): The Spanish Singer, Boating
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National Gallery (London) & Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane: Music in the Tuileries Gardens
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Kunsthalle Mannheim (Germany): The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (final version)
The Value of Manet’s Art
Manet’s works are among the most prized in the world. Because many of his masterpieces are already in museums, major canvases rarely come to market. When they do, they achieve extraordinary results.
The current record for a Manet painting is $65.1 million, achieved in 2014 for Jeanne (Spring), a radiant portrait now housed at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Other significant works regularly achieve tens of millions when they surface at auction.
The hierarchy of value is clear:
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Major oil paintings of signature subjects: tens of millions
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Pastels and watercolors: several million
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Prints and etchings: more accessible, often five figures or less
Manet’s market remains strong because of the rarity of his top works and his critical importance to the birth of modern art.
Legacy: Why Manet Still Matters
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He redefined subject matter. By painting Parisian life—its cafés, parks, and scandals—he showed that modern life itself was worthy of art.
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He transformed technique. His flatness, bold contrasts, and love of black shaped modern painting.
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He bridged tradition and modernity. Influenced by Velázquez and Goya, yet pioneering the themes that Impressionists and modernists would adopt.
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He embodied independence. Refusing labels, he charted his own path, inspiring generations of artists to do the same.
Conclusion
Édouard Manet changed painting forever. Whether shocking with Olympia, provoking with Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, haunting with A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, or politicizing with The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, he consistently forced viewers to confront modernity head-on.
His works are now enshrined in the world’s leading museums and valued at record-breaking sums on the art market. But more importantly, his paintings continue to feel alive—because they are about presence, about looking, about the here and now.
To stand before a Manet canvas is to experience the birth of modern art.
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