Painter
Edouard Manet
The Paris painter whose scenes of modern life opened the way to Impressionism.
On Picturepops™ cards · 1
The life
1832-1883Born Paris, France
Edouard Manet was born into a well-off Paris family that wanted him to study law; he chose painting instead and trained with Thomas Couture. In the 1860s his Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia caused scandal at the Salon, but younger painters saw in his flat light and plain modern subjects a new way forward, and he became a central figure for the Impressionists without ever showing with them. Cats turn up often in his work, from the black cat in Olympia to the cat prints he made for Champfleury's book Les Chats (1869). On Picturepops cards: A Cat Curled Up, Sleeping (1861), a pencil drawing in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.