Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
by Édouard Manet, 1863
Artwork Details
Details
- Year
- 1863
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 208 cm × 265.5 cm
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Édouard Manet painted this Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) in 1863, causing immediate scandal at the Salon des Refusés. A nude woman sits casually with two fully clothed men in modern dress, while another woman bathes in the background. The direct gaze of the nude, modeled by Victorine Meurent, confronts viewers with uncomfortable frankness.
Classical paintings showed nudes as goddesses or allegories; Manet presented a contemporary Parisian woman undressed in a public park. The composition quotes Raphael and Giorgione, but the modern clothing transforms mythological distance into provocative immediacy. Critics called it indecent, vulgar, and incomprehensible.
Emperor Napoleon III himself declared it "an offense against modesty." Yet the painting launched modern art's break with academic tradition. Manet's flat lighting, visible brushwork, and refusal to idealize predicted Impressionism. It hangs at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, now celebrated as radical.
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About Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
It's at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Édouard Manet painted it in 1863. It was rejected by the official Salon and shown instead at the Salon des Refusés, where it caused a scandal.
A nude woman sits casually with two fully clothed men in a modern park setting. Nudity in art was acceptable when depicting mythological figures, but Manet placed a recognizable Parisian woman (his model Victorine Meurent) in an everyday scene. That directness shocked the public.
It's often called the first truly modern painting. Manet challenged academic rules about subject matter, composition, and technique simultaneously. The flat lighting, visible brushwork, and contemporary subject matter influenced every avant-garde movement that followed, from Impressionism onward.
It measures 208 cm × 264.5 cm (81.9 × 104.1 inches). The large scale was traditionally reserved for history painting, so applying it to a scandalous picnic scene was provocative. Manet drew his composition from Raimondi's engraving after Raphael, giving it an old master lineage that critics noticed.
The nude woman is model Victorine Meurent, who also posed for Olympia. The two men are Manet's brother Gustave and his future brother-in-law Ferdinand Leenhoff. The woman bathing in the background adds spatial depth. None of the figures interact convincingly, which was intentional: Manet wanted artifice, not illusion.
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