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We were taught at the Beaux-Arts to consider Manet an absurd person or else an epateur, who, not being able to paint like M. Gerome, determined to astonish. I remember perfectly well the derision with which those chefs d'oeuvre, "Yachting at Argenteuil" and "Le Linge", were received.
A theory is slowly evolved, nearly always unknown to the author, from the discoveries of his sincere instinct, and this theory can only be formulated after years by criticism facing the works. Monet and Manet have worked for a long time without ever thinking that theories would be built upon their paintings.
In my own time I have seen Verbeckoeven eclipsed by Van Marcke, Bouguereau, Cabanel, and Gérôme by Manet, and Sir Frederick Leighton by John Sargent a young David slaying the Goliath of English technic with but a wave of his magic brush and, last and by no means least, the great French painter Meissonier by the equally great Spanish master Sorolla.
Manet, the Déjeuner, the Musique aux Tuileries, the Bon Bock, Argenteuil, Le Linge, En Bateau and the Bar, will always remain admirable masterpieces which will do credit to French painting, of which the spontaneous, living, clear and bold art of Manet is a direct and very representative product.
The A.S.C. uses up more stationery than all the departments in Whitehall, and its motto is litera scripta manet which has been explained by an A.S.C. sergeant, instructing a class of potential officers, as meaning "Never do anything without a written order, but, whatever you do, never write one."
Duret tells of a passage at arms between Manet and Alfred Stevens at the period when the former's Le Bon Bock met for a wonder with a favourable reception at the Salon of 1873. This portrait of the engraver Belot smoking a pipe, his fingers encircling a glass, caused Stevens to remark that the man in the picture "drank the beer of Haarlem."
But it would be unjust to say that Manet has only had the merit of opening up new roads; that has been said to belittle him, after it had first been said that these roads led into absurdity. Works like the Toréador, Rouvière, Mme.
Manet will occupy an important position in the French School. He is the most original painter of the second half of the nineteenth century, the one who has really created a great movement. His work, the fecundity of which is astonishing, is unequal.
It is difficult to imagine the degree of irritation and obstruction of the official painters against all the ideas of the new painting, and if it had only depended upon them, there can be no doubt that Manet and his friends would have died in total obscurity, not only banished from the Salons and museums, but also treated as madmen and robbed of the possibility of living by their work.
After Haarlem and Frans Hals you may realise that Manet and Sargent had predecessors; after a visit to The Hague the View of Delft may teach you that Vermeer was an Impressionist long before the French Impressionists; also that he painted clear light as it never before was painted, nor since. As for Rembrandt, the last word will never be said.
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