Histoire De Édouard Manet Et De Son Oeuvre

Théodore Duret knew Édouard Manet when the painter was still alive, when his canvases still scandalized Paris, when "Olympia" made respectable viewers gasp and look away. This biography, written by that friend and early champion, offers something no later scholar can replicate: intimacy with the man behind the revolution. Duret traces Manet's journey from a bourgeois son expected to practice law, through his rebellious years in the studio of Couture, to the bold innovator who would mentor Monet and Renoir and fundamentally alter the course of painting. We see Manet wrestling with his art in ways only a friend could record: the private doubts, the public battles, the fierce independence that refused academic approval. This is primary source material for understanding the birth of modern art, written from inside the circle by someone who helped shape the painter's legacy.