Looking at Manet

Manet's career was surrounded by controversy almost from the very start. The hard-edged technique of his early works was not what Salon audiences expected, and when he started painting subjects as uncompromising as the unclothed picknicker in the Dejeuner sur l'herbe or the aggressively naked young courtesan in Olympia, with her suggestive cat, Paris was outraged. Such scandal was grist to the mill of his friend, the outstanding Realist novelist Emile Zola. Zola's passionate polemic in Manet's defence is justly famous as one of the finest writings on art of the 19th century. Manet thanked Zola by painting his portrait, which the novelist commemorated in a further essay; and when Manet died at the early age of 51, Zola wrote a moving summation of his life's work. All these writings are included in this volume, which is introduced by the Zola specialist Robert Lethbridge.