Painting techniques of the masters
Edouard Manet (1832 - 1883)
In the course of his career, Manet directed the subject matter of Realist painting away from rural life towards the modern urban life of Paris. Early in his work, Manet developed a slurred, wet in wet technique of mixing colours directly on the canvas. He also suppressed middle tones and boldly stressed areas of light and dark. For this, he chose a strong, full faced light source to eliminate half-tones and create flattened planes of light and shade. Manets' early subjects show the influence of Spanish painting, particularly Velazquez, and reflect on awareness of contemporary, popular prints.
Manet exploited pale grounds, often grey or creamy off-white, for their luminosity and flatness. It is more difficult to create the illusion of depth on a pale ground and he used this to his advantage in creating a shallow pictorial space. On such a ground, thinly painted areas contrasted with the oil-rich colours in the areas of interest, this directs the viewers eye to the important areas of a painting.
A deliberate and sometimes hesitant artist, Manet sought to disguise his slowness behind an impression of immediacy. Monet said of Manets' Olympia: 'He had a laborious careful method, He always wanted his paintings to have the air of being painted at a single sitting, but often would scrape down what he had executed during the day... he kept only the lowest layer, which had great charm and finesse, on which he would begin improving'.
During the 1860's, Manet used diluted, subdued colours for his underpainting. However, as a result of his contact with Monet, he began to use paler colours, closer to the local colours of his subjects. Observation of outdoor light made Manet abandon his tonal palette and, like the Impressionists, added white in order to brighten colours. Manets' early works exhibit the cool light and warm brown shadows of the studio. He was at the time preoccupied with the reworking Old Masters' compositions and themes with modern subjects. His painting technique combined traditional and innovative elements. In spite of Manets' contact with Impressionism, he continued to bridge the gap between past and present, and the revolutionary aspects of his technique influenced his successors.