Beginnings

Édouard Manet

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe

1863

Oil on canvas, 207 × 265 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Two clothed men and a naked woman picnic in a wood. Refused by the 1863 Salon jury, it became the main attraction of the Salon des Refusés.

• Shown as Le Bain (The Bath), it drew laughter and charges of obscenity.
• The theme comes from the Louvre's Concert champêtre, today given to Titian.
• Victorine Meurent posed for the nude, who turns to look straight at the viewer.
• The woods behind are only roughly sketched, with little depth, on purpose. The Impressionists would push this sketch-like finish much further.
• Étienne Moreau-Nélaton gave it to the French state in 1906.

Picnics in the woods near Paris were a common Sunday outing. Set there, beside men in modern dress, the nude reads as a real woman.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain