From Hoots to Honors

"The most important person in any picture," Edouard Manet once remarked, "is the light." Manet's painted light illumined a Manhattan gallery last week--and also lit up some of his borrowings. It was the largest collection of Manet's works (88 in all) Manhattan had ever seen.

There was an Absinthe Drinker reminiscent of Frans Hals, a Spanish Ballet in Goya's broad, fluent style, a flag-decked street brushed loosely and brightly in the manner of Monet,* and a rather plain blonde mooning over a plum in a cafe which Degas might have painted. Their sources were often apparent, but Manet's clean, revealing light raised each picture above the level of imitation and tended to surpass even his chosen masters'. That same light had long made Manet a laughingstock of Paris.

Born rich (in 1832), Manet decided early on his lifework and never had to compromise. Art school, he complained, was "like entering a tomb," but he spent six years buried there, learning to paint studio nudes in various shades of tobacco juice. When he had all the fashionable tricks cold, Manet started traveling, copied masterpieces in Belgium, Holland, Germany and Italy. After such a training, he submitted his personal experiments to the Salon--Paris' high court of art.

The result was usually a scandal. Connoisseurs could find their way about like owls in the brown murk of academic painting; Manet's light-filled colors simply made them hoot. His subject matter, all agreed, was worse than vulgar. Manet had seen fit to invite common people off the street to pose for him, he imitated the impossible glare of sunshine, and he even dared to picture nudes in contemporary settings. Napoleon III himself pronounced Manet's Dejeuner sur I'Herbe (see cut) a threat to public morals. Public disgust was summed up in one word--a word delivered with the sneers reserved for "abstractionism" today--"realism."

But as Manet grew older his realism began to seem acceptable, compared with the wilder menace of "impressionism." Manet refused to exhibit with the sunburned young landscapists, yet his defeats paved the way for their triumphs. Manet ended by cutting quite a swath in the Paris art world; the elegant prophet of painted light at last received an award he craved: the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

* Impressionist Claude Monet made a point of signing his iridescent canvases of lily pads, meadows and sparkling waves with his first name as well as his last, so as not to be confused with his close friend Manet.

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