This is the French edition of the catalogue of the exhibition Manet - Les natures mortes presented at the Musée d’Orsay in 2000.
In the 1860s, still-life paintings were in fashion. It established its sheen on the collapse of the old hierarchy (and benefited this just as much as genre and landscapes), and the rediscovery of a certain 18th century and the recent glory of Chardin, even though the reluctances are many in front of works judged to be essentially decorative and destined to feminine talents.
Edouard Manet (1832-1883) painted his first compositions at the beginning of the 1860 and after an absence during the 1870s, where he only painted a dozen still-lives, he found a renewed enthusiasm for the genre from 1880 and until his death and made it a privileged subject in his research.
Manet’s still-lives, between tradition and modernity, evoke an elegant and sensual world.
Unlike Courbet, who ingrains his themes in a prosaic reality, or Cézanne, whose vision is voluntarily distanced, Manet gets his inspiration from the most ordinary subjects to which he gives a carnal presence.
Despite their simplicity, his compositions are always subtly elaborate, whether it is a lemon, an asparagus, violets or peonies… Some of these small intimate pictures are destined to a friend or a beloved woman.
The ultimate bunches of flowers, freshly cut garden flowers arranged in a crystal vase, show the artist’s appetite for life.
