Edouard Manet: 1832 - 1883 Edouard Manet was born in Paris on
January 25, 1832, the son of a wealthy lawyer. On leaving school
at the age of 16, he joined the navy. He would have preferred to
study painting, however, and in 1850 his father at least allowed
him to enroll as a pupil of the history painter Thomas Couture,
with whom he remained for six years. Manet's revolutionary
Absinthe Drinker, submitted to the Paris Salon of 1859, was
rejected by the jury, though the great Romantic painter Eugene
Delacroix protested on his behalf against their decision. In
1861, influenced by Spanish pictures and fasinated by Spanish
subject-matter, Manet offered The Guitarist to the Salon. It was
accepted, and praised by the poet and art critic Theophile
Gautier. Another poet-critic, Charles Baudelaire, was a friend
of the young painter, and wrote an article on him in 1862. At
the Salon des Refuses of April, 1863, Manet showed Le Dejeuner
sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), for which nude and clothed
figures had posed in t