LLI0619 -  Edouard Manet and Modern Beauty

Course Description

Depicting the Paris of his day, the French artist Edouard Manet has been considered as the most modern among his peers.  Manet frequented the city’s cafes, and admired its modern fashions, making sketches of what inspired him and turned them into “realist style” oil paintings.

Manet’s life was cut short due to a painful illness from which he could not recover and died at the age of 51.  It was especially his last 2 years to which the Art Institute of Chicago dedicated a recent exhibition.  Considered as his last works, that also included pastels, these are rendered with detail and delicate brushwork.  They are not considered lesser paintings, but a full expression of this man, whose final works demonstrate his fierce embrace of beauty and pleasure in mid-19^th century Paris.

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