Was Manet the leader of the Impressionists? The General Who Refused to March.
- Art d'Histoire
- Jan 27
- 3 min read
He NEVER exhibited at the Impressionist exhibitions. In the smoky atmosphere of the Café Guerbois, amidst the clinking of glasses and the haze of tobacco smoke, a revolution was brewing. The central figure of this artistic insurgency was undoubtedly Édouard Manet. To the critics and the public, he was the high priest of the Batognolles Scool or "School of Stains," the man who had paved the way for an art that rejected the polished finish of the Academy in favor of the "grey spot." Albert Wolff, a scathing columnist, once described Manet as a roadman, standing motionless and stretching out his arm to show the "young school" the way. Yet, when the moment of truth arrived in April 1874—the first independent exhibition that would launch Impressionism—the "General" was conspicuously missing from the battlefield. Worse, he was exhibiting at the Salon.
The Rivalry of the Vowels
The confusion regarding Manet's leadership was fueled by a comedy of errors involving his name. Years earlier, at the Salon of 1866, the public and critics had heaped praise upon a "Woman in the Green Dress." Manet’s friends congratulated him on the work, only to be met with the painter's fury. The painting was not his, but the work of a young upstart named Claude Monet. The similarity in their surnames caused endless friction. At the time, Manet was far from embracing the techniques of his younger admirers. Upon seeing Monet's early attempts at painting outdoors, Manet dismissively exclaimed to his circle: "Look at this young man who wants to paint in the open air; did the Old Masters bother with that?" It was only after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 that Manet, finally won over by Monet’s talent, began to experiment with the lighter palette and plein air techniques that would come to define the movement.
"More Vain Than Intelligent"
Despite this eventual artistic convergence, the political rift in 1874 was absolute. Degas, who was instrumental in organizing the independent exhibition at the Nadar studio, was furious at Manet's refusal to join. In a bitter letter to James Tissot, Degas wrote that Manet was stubbornly insisting on making an "aside," concluding that the painter was definitely "more vain than intelligent." Manet’s reasoning was strategic, if not cynical. having suffered a commercial failure with his exhibition at the Martinet gallery in 1863 and seeing the bankruptcy of the Société des Aquafortistes, he had no faith in amateur associations. For Manet, the only battle worth fighting was the official Salon; he believed that was where the true confrontation with the public had to take place, not in a "small artistic sanctuary."
The Nervous Breakdown
The press did not fail to notice the irony of the absence of Manet. While the "Impressionist" group was being mocked for their revolutionary zeal, critics pointed out that the supposed head of the conspiracy was nowhere to be found. A famous caricature by Cham in 1879 retrospectively depicted Manet collapsing in a "nervous breakdown" at the mere sight of independent painting. The critics mocked the situation, noting that while Manet was the "signpost" for the movement, he was a revolutionary who had been overtaken by his own troops. While his disciples were hanging their works on the walls of Nadar's photographic studio on the Boulevard des Capucines, Manet was exhibiting his Railway at the official Salon, trying desperately to gain the establishment recognition that his "students" had so boldly rejected.
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