Manet

<p>Lampooned during his lifetime for his style as much as his subject matter, French painter <b>Édouard Manet</b> (1832-1883) is now considered a crucial figure in the history of art, bridging the transition from Realism to Impressionism.<br> <br> Manet's work combined a painterly technique with strikingly modern images of contemporary life, centered on the urban Paris experience. He recorded the <b>city's parks, bars, and cabarets, often delighting in the frisson of underground or provocative content.</b> The Paris salon rejected his Déjeuner sur l'herbe with its juxtaposition of fully dressed men and a nude woman, while the steady gaze and unabashed pose of the prostitute <b>Olympia</b>, a very modern reworking of Titian's Venus of Urbino, caused a society scandal.<br> <br> This richly illustrated book introduces Manet's work and his uniquely influential combination of Realism, Impressionism, and reworked Old Masters that would become <b>paradigms of a brave new world for generations of modernists</b> to come.</p>