Edouard Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) is one of the most famous pieces of French art and arguably one of the most influential. Flouting the boundaries of high art and popular culture; notions of city and country; the world in painting and the world of viewer, it has inspired works by the likes of Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Picasso, and continues to inspire artists, such as J. Seward Johnson, Jr., today. Nearly a century and a half after it was made, the painting remains enigmatic: we feel as if we are intruding on a scene in which we have absolutely no idea what is going on. Two men, dressed in fashionable Parisian clothing, sit with a stark naked woman, their picnic tossed aside. The man on right appears to be communicating with the others, but they seem to be ignoring him. The woman looks directly out at us, the viewer; the other man gazes off into space; the woman bathing in the background is all but forgotten.
What was so shocking about Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe? It was not the first time a female nude had been depicted with clothed men, although the woman’s pose, which reveals little to the viewer except that she is naked, and direct gaze, which confirms her lack of shame, subverted the Salon’s traditional image of the female nude. Nevertheless, the real controversy in the 1860’s was the painting’s size and subject. Manet’s Déjeuner posed problems of classification: it was too big to be a genre piece, too modern to be pastoral, too mystifying to be a conversation piece (Tucker, 76). Manet’s canvas, measuring 7 by 8½ feet, was his largest ever at that point in his career. This large size was traditionally reserved for the re-creation of noble
events: historical, religious, and mythological ones: Manet’s depiction of an everyday scene on a large scale blatantly undermined this tradition.
According to Manet’s friend Antonin Proust, the idea for the picture came to Manet while watching bathers in Argenteuil. The sight evoked Giorgione’s Fête Champêtre, which Manet had copied while studying under Thomas Couture. He reportedly told Proust this, and said, “I want to re-do it and to re-do it with a transparent atmosphere with people like those you see over there. I know it’s going to be attacked but they can say what they like” (qtd. Tucker, 12). Manet was clearly not only aware of but aiming for the potential controversy, and out to make a name for himself.
Manet’s inspiration was not limited to Giorgione; Raphael and Courbet also influenced him. The positioning of the figures derives from Raphael’s Judgment of Paris, which depicts three river gods in the bottom right corner in the same position Manet places his three figures in front. Courbet’s Ladies on the banks of the Seine (1856-6) was also an important antecedent. By placing Parisian women in the countryside Courbet undermined the traditional image of the countryside as an independent, unchanging sphere (Tucker, 79). 
It was believed that modern, urban ideas would disrupt the modest living and restricted horizons of rural life.
In his Déjeuner Manet used his frequent model, Victorine Meurent, for the woman in the foreground. Also depicted were Manet’s brother-in-law, Ferdinand Leenhoff, as the male figure seated next to Meurent, and his younger brother Eugène, as the man on the right who points at Meurent (Tucker, 93). It is unclear when Manet completed his Déjeuner sur l’herbe, but he submitted it to the 1863 Salon, and was rejected along with 2,783 of the nearly 5,000 entries. As a result of the large number, the French emperor Napoleon III invited those whose works had been rejected to exhibit in a Salon des Refusés. The majority of artists chose not to accept, figuring the Salon would only be another chance to be mocked, but Manet submitted three pieces, most notably his Déjeuner sur l’herbe which he exhibited under the name Le Bain (The Bath).
The ambiguity of the piece resulted in varied critical response. Castagnary, the left-wing critic, wrote, “Not one detail has attained its exact and final form… I see garments without feeling the anatomical structure which supports them and explains their movements… What else do I see? The artist’s lack of conviction and sincerity” (qtd. Tucker, 18), yet he also admitted there was a “certain verve in the colors, a certain freedom of touch which are in no way commonplace” (qtd. Tucker, 18). The Goncourt brothers writing in Manette Salomon were less restrained, viewing Manet’s picture as a joke to the fine art world:
“It has become the farcical credo of skepticism, the Parisian revolt of disillusion… the great modern form, impious and carnivalesque… the Blague, this terrifying laughter, enraged, feverish, evil, almost diabolical, that comes from spoiled children, from the rotten children of the dotage of a civilization”Despite being seen as a blague, or joke, the controversy surrounding his Déjeuner catapulted Manet to fame, making him a hero in the eyes of younger artists, such as Monet. It is not surprising, therefore, that Monet chose to make a name for himself by better painting a Déjeuner sur l’herbe.
(qtd. Tucker, 87).
Images:
Manet, Edouard. Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1863. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Johnson, Jr., J. Seward. Déjeuner Déjà Vu, 1994. Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey, USA.
Courbet, Gustave. Ladies on the banks of the Seine, 1856-7. Musée du Petit Palais, Paris.