It was Lunch on the Grass, an offensive painting in Paris in 1860s, that had changed the progress of the whole history of art. Authored by Edward Manet, this painting showed a flirting naked lady lying lazily in the park. Next to her, there were two dressed gentlemen. When first exhibited in 1863, it stirred up a huge controversy because of its rebel against the French traditional ideas.
However, this offense would turn out to be a shock, if the High Society would have been informed of the truth of Manet’s privacy. Recently, a documentary article reported that Manet’s father, one of the most respected judges, had a love child brought up by Manet as his own.
In a program of TV5 named “each painting with a story”, art critics Wademar disclosed that August Manet, the senior judge of Supreme Court and the senior official of the judiciary in Pairs, had a child with a lady hired as the piano teacher.
Ten years later, Edward got married with this piano teacher and her son Lien had appeared in many of Manet’s paintings, so it was suspected that her son should be the painter’s own child. However, Wademar rolled his eyes upon such a saying. He rather thought that Auguste was forced to agree Manet’s decision as a painter and sponsor him as a return to conceal the truth. From the view of a person from the upper class, painter is deemed as holding no promise.
”Surprisingly, his father accepted his decision to be a painter and bore his living and education expenses. It was not so easy for Auguste Manet to accept his son’s rebel and sponsor him, which definitely did not conform to his personality. Maybe Auguste was not as respected as he pretended to be; or Edward knew some affairs that his father didn’t want to make public, or some of his father’s secrets” , Wademar disclosed, “the most convincing evidence showed it was Auguste Manet but not Edward Manet who was little Lien’s father. If so, Edward wanted to tell his own understanding about hypercritical respectability, nature of lust, the prevailing hypocrisy in his Lunch on the Grass created in the same year when Auguste passed away. ”
When Edward was born in 1832, Auguste expected him to hold a post in a judiciary. However, at the instigation of his uncle Charles Fournier, Manet determined to be a painter. He was apprenticed to classical painter Couture, who was famous for the classical nude paintings. In 1863, Pairs official salon rejected the exhibition of his Lunch on the Grass, on the charge of “indecent exposure”. When finally appeared on the Salon des Refuses, it arose from a storm and was deemed as foolish, childish, even naïve.
The maximum value of this painting was that it witnessed the break between Menet and classic nude painting method. Under his brush, the nude dared to steadily stare at the audiences while the two gentlemen beside her did not wear ancient clothing but the fashion ones.
Professor John House from Courtauld Institute said, “In this painting, the pointed offense could be easily sensed. A modern lady without clothing sat together with two well dressed gentlemen, which obviously offended public decency. However, if you should be a man of a taste, this painting would be absolutely elegant. None could paint clothing as complete, obvious and forward as he did”.
Viktorledue Mulunte, a nude model, served as Manet’s Muse for ten years and was the model of the painter’s another controversial work Olympia. In the picture, a naked courtesan was sitting on a couch. In the eyes of some people, this painting equaled with great scourges and pregnant women are discouraged to appreciate it.
In Lunch on the Grass, there were two male images: one was Manet’s brother Gustav with a cylindrical cap and the other was her wife’s brother Ferdinand. This painting was inspired by those paintings such as a concert, which was universally accepted as Georgie Weng’s works at that time and deemed as Titian and Lafeiersi’s works recently because they often made nude ladies and dressed men as images in their paintings.
Michael Hall, an editor of Art Journal Apollo, said that he was unsure about whether this painting was an interpretation of Manet’s family secrets, and doubted about the explanation of doing the biography through drawing paintings. He continued, “In my opinion, Manet tried to use this painting as a representation of the Past.”
Although opinions varied widely and no unanimous conclusion could be drawn, it brewed the coming of a significant period. Waldemar pointed out, “Without this painting, there will be neither Impressionism, nor modern schools.”
