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Quotes of the Day for 23 January 2005 - Edouard Manet

Edouard Manet was born at Paris on this day in 1832. The son of a French judge, he was pressured into studying law and chose to join the navy instead. He failed the entrance tests and spent six years studying classical painting, copying the old masters works, before launching his own style. He is considered the father of French Impressionism and several of the early Impressionists were friends and students of his, but he refused to join their exhibits or call himself an Impressionist. Despite the critics, his work was highly valued in his later life, among his 420 known oils are some that have fetched staggering sums in recent years. To my dismay, I didn't have a single quote from Manet in the database, but I felt better after seeing that Bartlett's didn't either.

There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.

The attacks of which I have been the object have broken the spring of life in me.... People don't realize what it feels like to be constantly insulted.

You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real.

It appears that it is necessary that I make a nude. Well, I will do it. In the transparency of the open air, with people as those which we see over there. I am going to be criticized savagely. It doesn't matter.

A painter can say all he wants to with fruit or flowers or even clouds.

Above all keep your colours fresh!
     - All from Edouard Manet, 1832 - 1883

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