Manet [antikvár]

Life Edouard Manet, who was destined to defy tradition and overturn convention, was born into a highly respectable French bourgeois family. His father, Auguste, was a senior official at the Ministry of Justice; his mother, Eugénie Désirée Fournier, a sensitive, well-educated woman, was the daughter of a diplomat. Edouard was born in Paris on 23 January 1832, at 5, Rue des Petits-Augustins (now Rue Bonaparte). In 1839 he was sent to the establishment of Canon Poiloup, in Vaugirard, as a weekly boarder, and in 1840 entered the College Rol-lin; in about 1845, on the advice of his uncle, his mother's brother, he joined the drawing class provided by the College. When he left school in 1848 his father, who was keen to obstruct his inclination towards painting, offered him the choice between a career in public service or a career as a naval officer. He chose the latter, but he failed the entrance examination; nevertheless he set sail as an apprentice pilot on the Guadeloupe. In 1849 he was in Rio, where he filled his notebooks with drawings and sketches; in the July of that year he failed the entrance examination for the second time, and this time was told that he would never be able to join the navy. He returned to Paris and his father agreed to allow him to follow his vocation and to become a painter. This was in 1850; Manet attended the painting classes held by Thomas Couture. He threw himself into his new life with tremendous enthusiasm, supplementing the work done in Couture's studio with frequent visits to the Louvre and other galleries, where he made careful copies of paintings by his favourite painters, Titian and Velázquez. He made trips to study in Italy in 1853 and 1856, and went to Holland, Germany and Austria in the same year. Meanwhile, according to Antonin Proust, Léon-Edouard Leenhoff was born on 29 January 1852, son of Manet and Suzanne Leenhoff, his brother's piano teacher who was a year older than he was. In 1855 the conflict between Couture's teaching and 3