Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French painter, one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life and a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Born in Paris in 1832, he studied under the academic painter Thomas Couture from 1850 to 1856 and copied Velázquez and Titian in the Louvre. His Luncheon on the Grass (1863) and Olympia (1865) caused great controversy with critics and the Academy but were praised by progressive artists, and they are considered to mark the start of modern art. His last major work, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, hung in the Salon in 1882; he died in Paris in April 1883, 11 days after his left foot was amputated because of gangrene.