Tarring a Boat
Édouard Manet
ÉDOUARD MANET, 1873. OIL ON CANVAS.
Rejecting the naval life his upper-class family envisioned for him, Manet chose instead to depict modern life in the 19th century in a way no artist had done before. Blazing a trail of loose brushstrokes, simplified forms, and emotive works that rejected the realist painting that had come before and came to inform so much of the impressionist style that followed him, Manet never felt comfortable in any one group or movement. Despite his role as a guiding light for the Impressionists, and a close friendship and mentorship with many of its key members, he did not want to formally join the group. For all his avant-garde sensibilities and radical aesthetics, Manet wanted to exhibit in the Salon, a bastion of French artistic tradition that the Impressionists rejected. Yet the Salon didn’t embrace him, and Manet, despite his acclaim and success, was too radical for the institutions and too respectful of the same institutions for the radicals.