Edouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1863. Musée d’Orsay.
Acclaimed author and art historian Ross King examines how Impressionism was born in Paris in the 1860s through a great rivalry between the painters Edouard Manet and Ernest Meissonier, known as ‘the two poles of art’. In this talk based on his book The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism, he discusses how Meissonier was the most famous and financially successful painter of the 19th century, hailed for his meticulous precision and obsessive attention to historical detail. How Manet, on the other hand, was reviled by the critics and mocked by the public for works such as Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia. The context between the two men was not just about artistic expression; it was also about competing visions of a world drastically changed by technology, politics and personal freedom.
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