Monday, January 14, 2013

Exhibition preview: Manet Portraying Life at the Royal Academy, London

by Alex Storey

Created on: January 08, 2013 ??Last Updated: January 14, 2013

The very first ever retrospective exhibition of Edouard Manet?s portraiture begins on Jan. 26, 2013, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.?

Manet: Portraying Life will include over 50 paintings that have been gathered from across the world and span the artist?s entire career. This singularly important exhibition of Manet?s engagement with portraiture (according to the

Royal Academy, 2013) has never been explored in exhibition form before, and the display is expected to be a huge success.??

Half of Manet?s oeuvre is actually portraiture, although these paintings have largely been overlooked and overshadowed by the towering significance of still-life modernism. Many people find this strange because Manet was just as committed to the genre of portraiture, thus he did like to paint everyone: family, friends, artists, literary and political figures of the nineteenth-century plus many more.?

A portrait of Manet?s wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, is among those on display, and she helps reveal the forward-thinking approach that her husband had. One of Manet?s most popular paintings is Music in the Tuileries Gardens about modern city life; it includes a portrait of the artist himself and this is likely to be an exhibition highlight.?

There will be some notable paintings at this forthcoming exhibition: Berthe Morisot, The Railway, The Luncheon, Eva Gonzales and a full-length portrait of Monsieur Arnaud, which is coming over from Milan on loan.?

Curator Mary Anne Stevens has spent over five years bringing this fabulous selection together, and audiences will have the chance to see more of Manet?s work than ever before; the main difficulty so far has been organizing the loans, as many of Manet?s paintings are in fragile condition and some are in private collections.?

Art historians will surely claim the exhibition as long overdue and take the opportunity to scrutinize with academic rigor every aspect of the exhibition which is likely to raise the big question about why some of Manet?s paintings seem unfinished.?

Edouard Manet (1832-83) is regarded by many as the founder of modern art. His revolutionary ideas, his unconventional technique and unique style have earned him the reputation as the father of impressionism and he finally gets his best exhibition here in the UK, almost 130 years since his death.?

As France?s most enigmatic yet controversial artist, Manet gave life to Parisian society using art in a way only he knew how; that life will now be brought to England?s capital city in the aptly named exhibition Manet: Portraying Life which lasts until April 14, 2013.

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