Edouard Manet (1832–83)

Edouard Manet was born in Paris at 5 rue des Petits-Augustins (now rue Bonaparte) on January 23, 1832. He was eldest son of Auguste Manet (1797-1862), a high-ranking civil servant in the Ministere de la Justice, and Eugenie-Desiree Fournier (1811-1895), the daughter of a French diplomat posted to Stockholm.

He had two brothers: Eugene, born a year later and Gustave, born in 1835. The Mantes were quite wealthy, and they love in a four-storey Left Bank apartment house across the street from L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the top art school in France at the time.

He was interested in drawing which his maternal uncle Edmond Fournier strongly supported and encouraged. Manet, a mediocre student at the Institute Poiloup, transfers to the fifth form of the Rollin School, where he meets An- tonin Proust, who becomes a lifelong friend. The two friends often visit the Louvre together, under the guidance of Fournier.

La femme au chat

In 1851, the two friends witnessed the boot coup d‘etat of Napoleon III. Manet sketches the dead on the street. Both are arrested during skirmished and detained for a few night.

Edouard Manet’s work contained elements of both Impressionism and Realism, put his own cat into some of his paintings. This comfortable moggie, the epitome of respectability, is seen, for instance, in La femme au chat, a portrait of Manet's wife.

Manet offered a glimpse of sophisticated Parisian society in his painting the Masked Ball at the Opera (1873). This work was supposedly inspired by the mass of masked young men and women who attended the centennial opening in Paris of The Marriage of Figaro, written by Pierre de Beaumarchais before the revolution.
Edouard Manet (1832–1883)

Who is Nini Lopez?

Who is Nini Lopez? Nini Lopez lived in the Butte Montmartre Paris around 1870s. She probably met Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Montmartre in 1876. Renoir met her when he moved to Montmartre for the summer to paint Bal du moulin de la Galette using real women from the neighborhood instead of expensive models.

George Rivière described her as an “ideal module: punctual, serious and discreet” and admired her “marvelous head of shining, golden blond hair.”

She posed for several of Renoir’s paintings during the 1870s. She appeared in at least fourteen of the artist’s canvases between 1874 and 1878 and it has been suggested that she posted for the large Promenade.

Lopez ended up marrying an actor of little reputation, much to the dismay of her mother, who had hoped that Renoir would become her protector.
Who is Nini Lopez?

Van Gogh in Paris

In February 1886, Vincent van Gogh was so poor that he could not pay his rent in Antwerp, Belgium, so he hotfooted it to Paris to move in with his brother.

He arrived unexpectedly in Paris in March 1886 and left just as abruptly. But he lived those two years like a ball of kinetic energy, interacting with the nineteenth century most dynamic artistic and intellectual environment.

van Gogh

Van Gogh stayed in the capital of the nineteenth century for two years, from 1886 to 1888. He lived with his brother Theo. Theo introduces van Gogh to the works of Clyde Monet and the Impressionists.

In Paris, his ideas about painting were challenged, and he learned new techniques and styles from many of the artists he met. In Paris he was introduced and became friends with Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, two painters who profoundly challenged his use of the palette.

Settling into an apartment with his brother on rue Lepic van Gogh explored his surroundings, paintings areas in close proximity to where he lived, including Asnieres, a nearby town along the bank’s of the Seine.

There he drew inspiration from the bridges, often depicting several different views, as well as the restaurants de la Sirene.

Paris 1886

He attended the salons of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, along with cancan dancers, musicians, actors and writers, and other members of the Montmartre demimonde. And he was particularly inspired by the work of Adolphe Monticelli, a painter from Provence who was known for his thickly painted and colorful still life of flowers.

During in Paris, van Goh used canvases of rather varied density, most commonly about 12 x 13 threads per square centimeter. Toward the end of his life, however, the majority of the canvases he employed has a weave that was slightly irregular and asymmetrical with 12 x 18 threads per square centimeter.
Van Gogh in Paris

A Pair of Shoes by van Gogh

A Pair of Shoes by van Gogh is a painting of shoes waiting to be worn. It was painted in 1887. It is one of the first paintings after his move to Paris in 1886. Several paintings were given the same title.

He must have been particularly satisfied with one version, A Pair of Shoes, since he signed and dated the painting, Vincent 87.

A Pair of Shoes by van Gogh

Woman in White by Pablo Picasso in history

Woman in White is a master piece of Neoclassical Period, which lasted from 1918 to 1925.

It was painted in 1923 by Pablo Picasso. A Spaniard who live most of his life in France and who for whole generation has been generally considered the most important artist.

It was likely painted in Paris in September 1923 after the artist had returned from his family holiday at Cap d’Antibes at the French Riviera.

Picasso depicted the model as a dreamlike vision of fragile perfection and refinement.

The model is Olga Koklova, Picasso’s young wife. However, in the catalogue to the seminal 1996 exhibition ‘Picasso and Portraiture’ William Rubin suggested that Picasso’s muse in this portrait and numerous others made between 1922 and 1923 was in fact American Beauty Sara Murphy (1883-1975), wife of the American Precisionist painter Gerald Murphy.
Woman in White by Pablo Picasso in history