MANET AND MODERN LIFE Édouard Manet was not the artist that the Second Empire would have selected to be its chronicler, but, in the end, it was Manet’s impressions of France’s last monarchy that would make an indelible mark on the public memory. Napoléon III followed...
AVANT-GARDE REALISM IN FRANCE: GUSTAVE COURBET In 1845, The art critic, Théophile Thoré (who “discovered” the Dutch artist, Jan Vermeer) complained that French art was “…without system, without direction, and abandoned to individual fantasy.”...