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A copy of the Olympe, by Gauguin, finished about this time, is said to be a masterpiece. But with Degas he was closer than the others. A natural-born writer, his criticisms of the modern French school are pregnant with wit and just observation. What was nicknamed the School of Pont-Aven was the outcome of Gauguin's imperious personality.
But in "Olympe" we find Manet departing from the individual to the universal.
"An honest child, and wanting bread. This is Paris I have been there!" "It is a bargain," replied the old man, getting up and rubbing his hands. When Olympe Bijou was gone, Josepha looked mischievously at the Baron. "If you want things to keep straight, Daddy," said she, "be as firm as the Public Prosecutor on the bench. Keep a tight hand on her, be a Bartholo!
Olympe and she gave up seeing one another, as you might imagine. I gave my new mistress a carriage and jewels. I gambled, I committed every extravagance which could be expected of a man in love with such a woman as Olympe. The report of my new infatuation was immediately spread abroad. Prudence herself was taken in, and finally thought that I had completely forgotten Marguerite.
One picture is the black goddess of evil, whom he has painted as she lies on a couch with a white background, a colour inversion of Manet's Olympe. With the cosmology of the islanders the Frenchman was familiar. He has, in addition to portraying the natives, made an agreeable exposition of their ways and days, and their naïve blending of Christian and Maori beliefs.
After studying the Maja desnuda at the Prado Museum he returned to France and painted the Olympe, once of the Luxembourg, now in the Louvre. The balcony scenes of Goya, with their manolas old-fashioned grisettes must have stirred Manet; recall the Frenchman's Balcony. And the bull-fights?
"Mother!" said Olympe, with authority, "the public will judge me; all I want is that monsieur will kindly promise to notice my debut." "Very good, mademoiselle," said la Peyrade in a tone of dismissal, beginning to edge the pair to the door. Olympe Cardinal went first, leaving her mother to hurry after her as best she could.
It is true that in 1863 Manet had drawn upon his head the thunderous wrath of Paris by exhibiting his Déjeuner sur l'Herbe and Olympe by no means a representative effort of the painter's genius, despite its diabolic cleverness. He studied Hals and with what glorious results in Le Bon Bock!
But my repentance was only of a moment's duration, and Olympe, who had finally put aside all self-respect, and discovered that by annoying Marguerite she could get from me whatever she wanted, constantly stirred up my resentment against her, and insulted her whenever she found an opportunity, with the cowardly persistence of a woman licensed by the authority of a man.
In former days, putting aside the naughty farces not supposed to present a picture of actual life, most French dramas were quite sound in conventional morality. Augier presented some wicked people, such as Olympe, concerning whom he invented the phrase la nostalgie de la boue; but he was unequivocably moral in his aims, and preached the sanctity of marriage and maternity.
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