The Luncheon on the Grass (풀밭 위에서의 점심)

[홀랜]

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (French: [lə deʒœne syʁ lɛʁb, -ʒøn-]; The Luncheon on the Grass) – originally titled Le Bain (The Bath) – is a large oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet created in 1862 and 1863.
It depicts a female nude and a scantily dressed female bather on a picnic with two fully dressed men in a rural setting. Rejected by the Salon jury of 1863, Manet seized the opportunity to exhibit this and two other paintings in the 1863 Salon des Refusés,[1] where the painting sparked public notoriety and controversy.[2] The work increased Manet's fame; in spite of this it nonetheless failed to sell at its debut.[3]

Édouard Manet – Déjeuner sur l'herbe (earlier version at the Courtauld)
The work is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.[4] A smaller, earlier version can be seen at the Courtauld Gallery, London.[5]
Description and context[edit]
The painting features a nude woman casually lunching with two fully dressed men. Her body is starkly lit and she stares directly at the viewer. The two men, dressed as young dandies, sit with her. In front of them, the woman's clothes, a basket of fruit, and a round loaf of bread are displayed, as in a still life. In the background, yet too large in comparison with the figures in the foreground, a lightly clad woman bathes in a stream. The man on the right wears a flat hat with a tassel, a kind normally worn indoors.
Despite the mundane subject, Manet deliberately chose a large canvas size, measuring 81.9 × 104.1 in (208 by 264.5 cm), normally reserved for historical, religious and mythological subjects.[6] The style of the painting breaks with the academic traditions of the time. He did not try to hide the brush strokes; the painting even looks unfinished in some parts of the scene. The nude is also starkly different from the smooth, flawless figures of Cabanel or Ingres.
A nude woman casually lunching with fully dressed men was an affront to audiences' sense of propriety, though Émile Zola, a contemporary of Manet's, argued that this was not uncommon in paintings found in the Louvre. Zola also felt that such a reaction came from viewing art differently from the perspective of "analytic" painters like Manet, who use a painting's subject as a pretext to paint.[citation needed]
There is much not known about the painting, such as when Manet actually began painting it, how he got the idea and how and what sort of preparatory works he did.[6] Though Manet had claimed this piece was once valued at 25,000 Francs in 1871, it remained in his possession until 1878 when Jean-Baptiste Faure, opera-singer and collector, bought it for just 2,600 Francs.[6]
Figures in the painting[edit]
The figures of this painting are a testament to how deeply connected Manet was to Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. Some[who?] assume that the landscape of the painting is meant to be l'Île Saint-Ouen, which was just up the Seine from his family property in Gennevilliers. Manet often used real models and people he knew as reference during his creation process.[7] The female nude is thought to be Victorine Meurent, the woman who became his favorite and frequently portrayed model, who later was the subject of Olympia. The male figure on the right was based on a combination of his two brothers, Eugène and Gustave Manet. The other man is based on his brother-in-law, Dutch sculptor Ferdinand Leenhoff. Nancy Locke referred to this scene as Manet's family portrait.[6]
Interactions of the figures[edit]
What many critics find shocking about this painting is the interaction, or lack thereof, between the three main subjects in the foreground and the woman bathing in the background. There are many contrasting qualities to the painting that juxtapose and distance the female nude from the other two male subjects. For example, the feminine versus the masculine, the naked versus the clothed, and the white color palette versus the dark color palette creates a clear social difference between the men and the woman.[7] Additionally, some viewers are intrigued by the questions raised by the gaze of the nude woman. It is indeterminable whether she is challenging or accepting the viewer, looking past the viewer, engaging the viewer, or even looking at the viewer at all. This encounter identifies the gaze as a figure of the painting itself, as well as the figure object of the woman's gaze.[7]
Inspirations[edit]
As with the later Olympia (1863) and other works, Manet's composition reveals his study of the old masters, as the disposition of the main figures is derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving The Judgment of Paris (c. 1515) after a drawing by Raphael.[8] Raphael was an artist revered by the conservative members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and his paintings were part of the teaching programme at the École des Beaux-Arts, where copies of fifty-two images from his most celebrated frescoes were permanently on display. Le Bain (an early title for Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe) was therefore, in many ways, a defiant painting. Manet was cheekily reworking Raphael, turning a mythological scene from one of the most celebrated engravings of the Renaissance into a tableau of somewhat vulgar Parisian holidaymakers.[9]

• Judgement of Paris Engraving (c. 1515) by Marcantonio Raimondi to a design by Raphael
• 
• The Pastoral Concert (c. 1510) by Giorgione or Titian, Louvre, Paris, cited as an inspiration for Manet's painting
• 
• Giorgione, The Tempest (c. 1508), Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Italy
• 
• Antoine Watteau, La Partie Carrée, (c. 1713)

Scholars also cite two works as important precedents for Manet's painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe: The Pastoral Concert by Giorgione or possibly Titian (in the Louvre) and Giorgione's The Tempest, both of which are famous Renaissance paintings.[6] The Tempest, which also features a fully dressed man and a nude woman in a rural setting, offers an important precedent for Manet's painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe.[10] Pastoral Concert even more closely resembles Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, as it features two dressed men seated in a rural setting, with two undressed women. Pastoral Concert is in the collection of the Louvre in Paris and is likely, therefore, to have been studied by Manet.
According to Antonin Proust, he and Manet had been lounging by the Seine as they spotted a woman bathing in the river. This prompted Manet to say, "I copied Giorgione's women, the women with musicians. It's black that painting. The ground has come through. I want to redo it and do it with a transparent atmosphere with people like those we see over there."[11]
There may be a connection between Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and the work of Antoine Watteau.[12] Manet's original title, Le Bain, initially drew the main attention to the woman near the water. This bathing figure alone is quite similar to the figure in Watteau's La Villageoise, as both women crouch or lean over near water, simultaneously holding up their skirts. It is possible that Manet adapted this pose, which is more clearly seen in a sketch of his, years before his creation of Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe.

Artist	Édouard Manet
Year	1863
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	208 cm × 264.5 cm (81.9 in × 104.1 in)
Location	Musée d'Orsay, Paris