This Painting Might Just Be the First Work of Modern Art
Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe by Édouard Manet
Take a moment to consider what one enraged art critic once said of this painting:
“The nude hasn’t a good figure, unfortunately, and one can’t think of anything uglier than the man stretched out next to her, who hasn’t even thought of taking off, out of doors, his horrid padded cap. It is the contrast of a creature so inappropriate in a pastoral scene with this undraped bather that is shocking. I can’t imagine what made an artist of intelligence and refinement select such an absurd composition…”
(Written by Théophile Thoré, a French journalist and art critic, in his review for L’Indépendance Belge.)
Responses like this were typical of the reception critics gave to Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.
Perhaps it’s not too surprising, since the painting is decidedly odd and has continued to puzzle viewers, even until the present day.
Yet the criticism of Thoré might actually offer interesting clues as to what this painting means and why it could be considered the very first work of Modern Art.
A Horrid Padded Cap
The painting shows a group of four people posing inside a wooded grove. They…
