0:00:02 > 0:00:04PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
0:01:00 > 0:01:05If anyone ever asked me who was the most mysterious
0:01:05 > 0:01:11and enigmatic painter I know, the one who's hardest to pin down,
0:01:11 > 0:01:14I know who my answer would be.
0:01:16 > 0:01:18The man who painted that.
0:01:20 > 0:01:22Edouard Manet.
0:01:25 > 0:01:32People say Manet invented modern art, that he's the greatest revolutionary of the 19th century.
0:01:34 > 0:01:36And of course, I love his work.
0:01:36 > 0:01:39I adore it. But put me in a corner
0:01:39 > 0:01:45and force me to tell you exactly why, and I don't think I can.
0:01:45 > 0:01:49I've looked and looked and looked at his paintings.
0:01:49 > 0:01:55Without being boastful, I know an enormous amount about him.
0:01:55 > 0:02:02And yet I've never penetrated to his core and really understood him.
0:02:02 > 0:02:04And nor has anyone else.
0:02:07 > 0:02:13This is Manet's most-notorious picture, Olympia,
0:02:13 > 0:02:18the most-controversial and provocative nude of the 19th century.
0:02:18 > 0:02:25When this was shown at the Salon of 1865, the gates of hell opened up
0:02:25 > 0:02:29and their contents poured down on Manet's head.
0:02:29 > 0:02:33What a scandal! What uproar! What drama!
0:02:35 > 0:02:38This caused a rumpus, too. And this.
0:02:38 > 0:02:41And this.
0:02:41 > 0:02:43And even this.
0:02:46 > 0:02:51It's as if everything Manet painted wasn't what you were supposed to paint.
0:02:51 > 0:02:54He moved the goalposts and rewrote the rules.
0:02:54 > 0:02:58The man was a rebel through and through...
0:02:58 > 0:03:00though he never looked like one.
0:03:02 > 0:03:04Now, this can't go on.
0:03:04 > 0:03:09We can't let a painter as revolutionary and magnificent
0:03:09 > 0:03:12as the man who did that slip through our grasp.
0:03:12 > 0:03:15It's time to crack his code,
0:03:15 > 0:03:19time to break his secret,
0:03:19 > 0:03:23time to get to the bottom of Edouard Manet.
0:03:27 > 0:03:29The Ile de la Cite,
0:03:29 > 0:03:34that mysterious and secretive Gothic island in the middle of the Seine,
0:03:34 > 0:03:38where the Hunchback of Notre Dame resided.
0:03:38 > 0:03:43This was the original heart of the city, surrounded by water,
0:03:43 > 0:03:49easy to protect, the ancient epicentre of being French.
0:03:49 > 0:03:54It was also where Manet's father worked - over there at the Palais de Justice.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01The Manets were lawyers and judges.
0:04:01 > 0:04:07For eight generations, they'd dispensed wisdom and rules to their fellow Frenchmen.
0:04:07 > 0:04:11Manet's father, Auguste, was a judge.
0:04:11 > 0:04:13His father had been a judge too,
0:04:13 > 0:04:16and the grandfather before that.
0:04:16 > 0:04:21So, not surprisingly, they expected little Edouard,
0:04:21 > 0:04:25born 23rd January 1832,
0:04:25 > 0:04:27to become a judge as well.
0:04:31 > 0:04:37The father was a really important figure in the French judiciary.
0:04:37 > 0:04:42He worked here, at the Palais de Justice, as the head of the civil courts,
0:04:42 > 0:04:45presiding over domestic disputes,
0:04:45 > 0:04:52arguments over wills and copyright, a thoroughly respectable figure
0:04:52 > 0:04:56who would never, ever have wanted his eldest son
0:04:56 > 0:05:01to become one of those new-fangled artists.
0:05:08 > 0:05:13The idea that a Manet would one day grow up to paint this,
0:05:13 > 0:05:18or this, would have been utterly discombobulating to Auguste.
0:05:18 > 0:05:26I think it's worth suggesting right at the outset that one of the reasons Manet did paint this...
0:05:26 > 0:05:30and this...was because he knew what they'd make of it
0:05:30 > 0:05:32at the Palais de Justice,
0:05:32 > 0:05:34and that only spurred him on.
0:05:34 > 0:05:37PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
0:05:39 > 0:05:44Manet's mother, Eugenie-Desiree Fournier,
0:05:44 > 0:05:47had a more inventive background
0:05:47 > 0:05:51because she was the goddaughter of the King of Sweden.
0:05:54 > 0:06:00Eugenie was 20 when she married Auguste Manet. He was 34.
0:06:00 > 0:06:04She brought with her a generous Swedish dowry,
0:06:04 > 0:06:10and more importantly for Manet, a rare passion for music.
0:06:11 > 0:06:15She'd trained as a singer and was good enough to sing
0:06:15 > 0:06:19at small private concerts and other people's soirees.
0:06:19 > 0:06:25This passion for music was to be her most-rewarding gift to her eldest son.
0:06:25 > 0:06:32Music was to play a critical role in Manet's work and life.
0:06:32 > 0:06:35PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
0:07:04 > 0:07:10Manet grew up in a changing city, and flux was his inheritance.
0:07:11 > 0:07:19The modern age was arriving in Paris at a brutal lick, and no-one was ready for it.
0:07:19 > 0:07:23The French Emperor, Napoleon III, nephew of the first Napoleon,
0:07:23 > 0:07:27had seized power in a low-grade coup d'etat,
0:07:27 > 0:07:30promising to make France great again,
0:07:30 > 0:07:35as great as she had been under the first Bonaparte.
0:07:35 > 0:07:38A little man with a big name,
0:07:38 > 0:07:44Napoleon III had one eye on history and the other on his legacy.
0:07:44 > 0:07:48And everywhere Manet would have looked as he grew up, tradition and modernity
0:07:48 > 0:07:52were tussling for the soul of the new France.
0:07:55 > 0:08:00This tussle continued in Manet's own family as well.
0:08:00 > 0:08:07His parents wanted him to study law and keep up the family tradition of producing judges.
0:08:07 > 0:08:11But Manet's own heart was elsewhere.
0:08:11 > 0:08:12SEAGULLS SCREECH
0:08:12 > 0:08:16There's a photo of him as a young boy, the only one I've seen.
0:08:16 > 0:08:20So alert, such a piercing gaze.
0:08:20 > 0:08:26Too intelligent and questioning, surely, to be a judge.
0:08:26 > 0:08:29His first ambition was to join the navy.
0:08:29 > 0:08:35When he was 17, he set off on a long sea voyage to Rio de Janeiro,
0:08:35 > 0:08:42which taught him so much about the sea, and perhaps a little about Latin women, too.
0:08:45 > 0:08:48When he came back, he failed his naval exams.
0:08:48 > 0:08:53The only thing Manet was ever going to be was an artist.
0:09:01 > 0:09:04The chap with a walrus moustache is Thomas Couture,
0:09:04 > 0:09:09in his time, the most-appreciated painter in Paris.
0:09:09 > 0:09:16Couture ran a workshop for young artists, and after lots of badgering, Manet senior
0:09:16 > 0:09:23finally agreed to let Manet junior study in Couture's workshop in 1850.
0:09:23 > 0:09:29Manet stayed there for six years, which, at 120 francs a year,
0:09:29 > 0:09:35adds up to a very long and very expensive apprenticeship.
0:09:36 > 0:09:42Couture had made his own reputation in 1847, when he showed
0:09:42 > 0:09:49this grotesque, flesh-laden monstrosity at the Paris Salon.
0:09:49 > 0:09:52It was called Les Romains de la Decadence -
0:09:52 > 0:09:54"the Roman orgy".
0:09:54 > 0:09:58And that, alas, is exactly what it showed -
0:09:58 > 0:10:03an enthusiastic Roman love-in, featuring a cast of hundreds.
0:10:06 > 0:10:09Although he was responsible for this monstrosity,
0:10:09 > 0:10:12Couture would always advise his pupils
0:10:12 > 0:10:15to paint the world around them, the new Paris,
0:10:15 > 0:10:17the trains, the factories.
0:10:17 > 0:10:20"Don't paint someone else's history,"
0:10:20 > 0:10:23he would advise them hypocritically,
0:10:23 > 0:10:27"paint your own." And that's exactly what Manet did.
0:10:37 > 0:10:41You must have noticed that the French harbour an interesting
0:10:41 > 0:10:46and resilient compulsion to make big urban statements.
0:10:46 > 0:10:49They all do it -
0:10:49 > 0:10:52Mitterrand, with his grand project at the Louvre.
0:10:52 > 0:10:56Pompidou, with his extraordinary and pipey centre.
0:10:56 > 0:11:01And all these ostentatious building projects can trace their origins back
0:11:01 > 0:11:07to the dreams of one man, that ruthless rebuilder of Paris, Baron Haussmann.
0:11:10 > 0:11:12Haussmann wasn't actually a baron.
0:11:12 > 0:11:14He was just "Monsieur Haussmann",
0:11:14 > 0:11:19but he called himself "baron" to give himself some appropriate status.
0:11:19 > 0:11:24Between 1853, when the Emperor made him prefect of the Seine,
0:11:24 > 0:11:32and 1870, when he was sacked for being so unpopular, Haussmann transformed Paris.
0:11:32 > 0:11:35And I mean transformed.
0:11:40 > 0:11:46Pretty much everything we think of as Paris today was Haussmann's doing.
0:11:46 > 0:11:49These big Parisian vistas,
0:11:49 > 0:11:51the huge, wide boulevards,
0:11:51 > 0:11:53Haussmann did it all.
0:11:58 > 0:12:03So what's all this got to do with Manet? As it happens, rather a lot.
0:12:03 > 0:12:09First off, it's important to recognise that the Paris he was living in for most of his adult life
0:12:09 > 0:12:15was a city in flux, a giant demolition site looking for its final shape.
0:12:15 > 0:12:20Manet couldn't get away from the smell of change.
0:12:20 > 0:12:23Nor could anyone else.
0:12:23 > 0:12:27But there's something more, something crucial.
0:12:27 > 0:12:34When Haussmann was knocking down the old neighbourhoods, he was knocking down the old certainties as well.
0:12:34 > 0:12:40People's personal geographies were being crushed - the inner maps they had inherited.
0:12:44 > 0:12:49I was in Beijing just before the Olympics, and the same thing was happening there.
0:12:49 > 0:12:56The old cantons were being demolished, all the undesirables moved out into the suburbs.
0:12:56 > 0:13:03An ancient city was being forced to become a modern one, whether it wanted to or not.
0:13:05 > 0:13:08Manet's Paris was like that as well.
0:13:08 > 0:13:13And this alienation of the people, the removal of their sense of place,
0:13:13 > 0:13:21was being played out not just in the streets of the city, but in Manet's studio as well.
0:13:21 > 0:13:25He was now in his late twenties, but looked older -
0:13:25 > 0:13:28prematurely balding, bearded.
0:13:28 > 0:13:31And the vagabonds, drunks and gypsies
0:13:31 > 0:13:36loitering in his earliest pictures can, at first glance,
0:13:36 > 0:13:39seem rather conservative, too.
0:13:39 > 0:13:43But only at first glance.
0:13:47 > 0:13:50I'm in Washington DC at the National Gallery of Art.
0:13:50 > 0:13:55I'm going to see a painting that you won't have seen if you've visited the gallery in the past two years,
0:13:55 > 0:13:57because it hasn't been hanging on the walls.
0:13:57 > 0:14:00The reason it hasn't been hanging on the walls
0:14:00 > 0:14:03is because it's being restored.
0:14:03 > 0:14:09It's one of Manet's most-celebrated early masterpieces - The Old Musician.
0:14:09 > 0:14:13Anne, is this the painting I remember seeing two years ago?
0:14:13 > 0:14:16I don't think it is. It's completely changed tonality.
0:14:16 > 0:14:21- It's like a different picture.- It's completely different. It was covered with thick, yellow varnish,
0:14:21 > 0:14:27and it made it very dark, very morose, very sombre. What we have now
0:14:27 > 0:14:31is a painting with a great deal of light and colour,
0:14:31 > 0:14:34and as you said, a very, very different painting.
0:14:34 > 0:14:39And some spectacular brushwork going on here.
0:14:39 > 0:14:42I mean, look at this. This could be a piece of abstract expressionism
0:14:42 > 0:14:46- from the 1950s, couldn't it? - Absolutely.
0:14:46 > 0:14:50It's such brave and free paintwork.
0:14:50 > 0:14:54When you remove the yellow veil which unifies everything,
0:14:54 > 0:14:57all of a sudden you get this wonderful
0:14:57 > 0:15:03sense of depth, because instead of everything being flattened
0:15:03 > 0:15:08by a yellow layer, you get the feeling
0:15:08 > 0:15:13of figures in the foreground and a landscape in the background.
0:15:13 > 0:15:17For myself, seeing something like this close up for the first time -
0:15:17 > 0:15:21I don't think I've ever been as close to a Manet before, certainly not a great one -
0:15:21 > 0:15:26it does have this extraordinary variety to it.
0:15:26 > 0:15:31If you look at this area and compare it with that area or that area,
0:15:31 > 0:15:35it's almost like a patchwork of different effects.
0:15:35 > 0:15:40He could have hidden all of these things, but he chose not to do that.
0:15:40 > 0:15:46One of the things we love about Manet is that he intentionally abrades his own paint sometimes.
0:15:46 > 0:15:52He rubs through it to expose the ground layer underneath, and you get
0:15:52 > 0:15:56this sort of soft quality. You can see it in the shoes here.
0:15:56 > 0:16:01- You can see he's rubbed through the paint and taken it away...- Oh, yes!
0:16:01 > 0:16:05..either scraping with a dry tool or using a rag,
0:16:05 > 0:16:13but we know it's not damaged, because then he comes over with this beautiful, luscious area.
0:16:13 > 0:16:18You can see this. He's deliberately taken some of the surface off to create this...
0:16:18 > 0:16:22It almost looks like a digital spot pattern from a modern computer.
0:16:22 > 0:16:27One could add white paint, but you won't get the same softness and that sort of
0:16:27 > 0:16:34broken quality of the paint, that rubbing through, where you get the texture as well as the variety.
0:16:34 > 0:16:37So we're talking about extreme technical inventiveness?
0:16:37 > 0:16:42Absolutely. He was truly a genius. He could really handle paint.
0:16:43 > 0:16:46FLAMENCO MUSIC PLAYS
0:16:51 > 0:16:59Just as Manet was emerging as an independent artist, Paris was struck down by a debilitating illness.
0:16:59 > 0:17:03Indeed, the whole of France seemed suddenly to succumb to it.
0:17:07 > 0:17:10The illness made you twitchy and excitable.
0:17:10 > 0:17:14It quickened the pulse and sweated the brow.
0:17:14 > 0:17:19"Hispanomania" it was called - a mad passion for all things Spanish.
0:17:22 > 0:17:27Spanish art, Spanish song, Spanish dance,
0:17:27 > 0:17:33Spanish storylines, Spanish tears, Spanish bloodlust -
0:17:33 > 0:17:37the French were obsessed with all of them.
0:17:37 > 0:17:43Napoleon III had a Spanish wife, the beautiful Empress Eugenie,
0:17:43 > 0:17:46so that was definitely part of it.
0:17:47 > 0:17:55Rumour had it that the Empress would sometimes go to fancy-dress balls in a matador's costume.
0:17:55 > 0:18:00No hot-blooded French male could resist the thought of that.
0:18:00 > 0:18:04Spanish art was also being rediscovered at the time.
0:18:04 > 0:18:10Velazquez, Murillo Goya...
0:18:10 > 0:18:15Their work was so dark and gutsy, so tangible, so direct,
0:18:15 > 0:18:23so utterly unlike the billowing pink mythologies favoured by French art.
0:18:23 > 0:18:28Manet had encountered Spanish art at the Louvre when he was in Couture's studio.
0:18:28 > 0:18:34He was devoted to Velazquez and had learnt much of his directness from him.
0:18:34 > 0:18:40And that confrontational air you get in his pictures, that feeling that his art is going
0:18:40 > 0:18:46mano a mano with you, that was inherited from Spanish art as well.
0:18:46 > 0:18:48HE SINGS IN SPANISH
0:18:51 > 0:18:56Spain may only have been just across the border from France,
0:18:56 > 0:18:59but emotionally, it was another world,
0:18:59 > 0:19:03and it spoke to something deep inside Manet.
0:19:05 > 0:19:09On the outside, he was notoriously dapper, always impeccably turned out
0:19:09 > 0:19:13with his yellow gloves and his walking stick.
0:19:13 > 0:19:19You can tell from the pictures of him painted by his friends that he gave very little away.
0:19:21 > 0:19:26He was buttoned up, secretive, elegant and proper.
0:19:26 > 0:19:31But one of my suspicions about Manet is that beneath this dapper exterior,
0:19:31 > 0:19:35he was surprisingly emotional and tender.
0:19:38 > 0:19:44This emotional inner life of his primed him to respond to Spanishness
0:19:44 > 0:19:48and led him to some peculiar and fascinating early art -
0:19:51 > 0:19:56the Spanish guitarist, caught open-mouthed in mid-song.
0:19:56 > 0:20:00Manet's brother, Gustave, as a snake-hipped majo,
0:20:00 > 0:20:03with something of the wolf about him.
0:20:03 > 0:20:09And this curious female bullfighter, pushed out unconvincingly
0:20:09 > 0:20:15among the bulls in a strange clash of realities.
0:20:15 > 0:20:20In 1862, an exuberant troupe of Spanish singers and dancers
0:20:20 > 0:20:24arrived in Paris from Madrid to perform at the Hippodrome.
0:20:24 > 0:20:28Their star was one Lola Melea,
0:20:28 > 0:20:34who sang and danced under the glorious stage-name of Lola de Valence.
0:20:36 > 0:20:40Lola, la-la-la Lola.
0:20:40 > 0:20:42She drove the French mad.
0:20:42 > 0:20:48Manet's friend, the poet Zacharie Astruc, wrote a very bad song about her.
0:20:48 > 0:20:54And Manet himself painted her on stage...so unexpectedly.
0:20:55 > 0:20:58It's such a forlorn picture.
0:20:58 > 0:21:02Lola de Valence, the crowd behind her, dressed up to the nines
0:21:02 > 0:21:06in her colourful Spanish costume, with her fan, her mantilla.
0:21:10 > 0:21:15But when you look at her face, instead of excitement or the energy
0:21:15 > 0:21:18you would expect to see there,
0:21:18 > 0:21:22there is sadness instead, and introspection.
0:21:22 > 0:21:30Lola was to be the first of Manet's forlorn modern heroines, his thinking women.
0:21:30 > 0:21:36Spanish art taught him to mistrust appearances and probe further.
0:21:36 > 0:21:42Beneath the blur of the castanets and the bang-bang-bang of the dancing feet, there was
0:21:42 > 0:21:48always something deeper going on, something more intense and pressing.
0:22:03 > 0:22:06Have you heard of Zaltbommel in Holland?
0:22:06 > 0:22:12Me neither, which is why I've come here and tracked down the cathedral,
0:22:12 > 0:22:15because Zaltbommel is an important location for Manet.
0:22:17 > 0:22:23This church, the imposing St Maartenskerk, had an excellent organist,
0:22:23 > 0:22:28Carolus Antonius Leenhoff, whose daughter, Suzanne Leenhoff,
0:22:28 > 0:22:35became Manet's piano teacher... and then his lover,
0:22:35 > 0:22:38possibly the mother of his son,
0:22:38 > 0:22:41and finally, his wife.
0:22:43 > 0:22:49Suzanne Leenhoff was plump, placid and musically talented.
0:22:51 > 0:22:55The story in Zaltbommel is that she was heard playing
0:22:55 > 0:22:58by no less a figure than Franz Liszt,
0:22:58 > 0:23:03who encouraged her to move to Paris to progress her music.
0:23:03 > 0:23:08In Paris, she started giving piano lessons to make ends meet.
0:23:08 > 0:23:16When she was 19, she was employed by the Manet family to teach their sons.
0:23:16 > 0:23:19We don't know exactly what happened next.
0:23:19 > 0:23:22We can only speculate feverishly.
0:23:22 > 0:23:29But on January 29th 1852, Suzanne, who was now 22,
0:23:29 > 0:23:36gave birth to a son and named him Leon Edouard.
0:23:36 > 0:23:42On the birth certificate, the father of this boy, Leon, is named Koella.
0:23:42 > 0:23:48No first name, just Koella. Now, this Koella has never been found.
0:23:48 > 0:23:51No trace of him exists.
0:23:52 > 0:24:00A few years later, however, when Leon was baptised, Edouard Manet served as his godfather.
0:24:00 > 0:24:05And since Suzanne and Manet ended up living together, it's usually assumed
0:24:05 > 0:24:11that young Edouard Manet, who was only 17 when he met Suzanne,
0:24:11 > 0:24:13must have been the father.
0:24:15 > 0:24:19He certainly went on to put Leon into many
0:24:19 > 0:24:22of his most mysterious pictures.
0:24:24 > 0:24:31Recently, however, the very uncomfortable suggestion has been made that Leon's father
0:24:31 > 0:24:34wasn't actually Edouard Manet, the painter,
0:24:34 > 0:24:40but HIS father, Auguste Manet, the high court judge.
0:24:43 > 0:24:47Some sort of cover-up was definitely being orchestrated -
0:24:47 > 0:24:50a deal between the Manets and Suzanne.
0:24:50 > 0:24:54In public, she never admitted that Leon was her son.
0:24:54 > 0:25:00Instead, he would always be presented as her younger brother or a visiting nephew.
0:25:00 > 0:25:07Even at her funeral, Leon was never officially accepted as Suzanne's son.
0:25:10 > 0:25:13All this would just be tittle-tattle
0:25:13 > 0:25:18and not worth our attention if it had no impact on Manet's art.
0:25:18 > 0:25:21But of course, it did -
0:25:21 > 0:25:27a mysterious, secretive, but powerful impact.
0:25:28 > 0:25:30In Manet's first pictures of Suzanne,
0:25:30 > 0:25:35she's such a vulnerable and terrorised presence.
0:25:35 > 0:25:38This bashful nude in Buenos Aires,
0:25:38 > 0:25:42The Surprised Nymph, is inspired by the Bible story
0:25:42 > 0:25:48of Susanna and the Elders, which describes how the gentle Susanna was bathing
0:25:48 > 0:25:55when a group of lecherous village elders spied on her and demanded her favours.
0:25:56 > 0:25:59Something personal is at stake here.
0:26:03 > 0:26:10Was Manet's father Leon's father too, or was it Manet himself?
0:26:10 > 0:26:13It's something we need to decide in this film.
0:26:13 > 0:26:15But one thing's certain.
0:26:15 > 0:26:20Beneath this polite, elegant, traditional facade
0:26:20 > 0:26:24that the Manets were presenting to the world,
0:26:24 > 0:26:29all sorts of powerful raptures and passions were stirring.
0:26:29 > 0:26:32And that wasn't just true of the Manets.
0:26:32 > 0:26:38It was true of the whole of Paris and of modern life itself.
0:26:47 > 0:26:52The Manet family lands were situated just to the north of Paris,
0:26:52 > 0:26:55around St Ouen and Gennevillier.
0:26:57 > 0:27:02They owned 150 acres of these valuable northern suburbs by the river.
0:27:02 > 0:27:06Manet's grandfather and his great-grandfather
0:27:06 > 0:27:12had both been mayors of Gennevillier, and had streets named after them.
0:27:12 > 0:27:15Manet would come up here for weekends and short holidays.
0:27:15 > 0:27:20The family still owned a large house not far from the river.
0:27:23 > 0:27:26Of course, at that time, it looked nothing like this.
0:27:26 > 0:27:32Progress has been particularly cruel to St Ouen and Gennevillier.
0:27:32 > 0:27:39If you want to see how the land actually looked in Manet's time, you need to turn to his art.
0:27:42 > 0:27:45The Manet family lands were the setting
0:27:45 > 0:27:48for several of his most personal pictures,
0:27:48 > 0:27:52including a particularly secretive one
0:27:52 > 0:27:57that was about to make Manet famous, though not in the way he wanted.
0:28:00 > 0:28:07To succeed as an artist in Manet's Paris, you needed first to succeed at that monstrous, unwelcoming,
0:28:07 > 0:28:11unhealthy art event, the Paris Salon.
0:28:13 > 0:28:20The Salon was the largest exhibition in the world, and had been for nearly 300 years.
0:28:20 > 0:28:27It started in 1673 as a prestigious selection of the best French art.
0:28:27 > 0:28:33It took place once a year in a gigantic exhibition hall on the Champs-Elysees.
0:28:34 > 0:28:40The Salon was a dog-eats-dog, rat-eats-rat kind of event.
0:28:40 > 0:28:43The art, piled high from floor to ceiling,
0:28:43 > 0:28:48was selected by a jury of France's most-conservative artists.
0:28:48 > 0:28:51The trouble is, everyone needed the Salon.
0:28:51 > 0:28:56There was no network yet of art dealers and private collections.
0:28:56 > 0:29:02If you wanted to make your name in art and sell your pictures, the Salon was the only way.
0:29:04 > 0:29:06Getting in was always tough.
0:29:06 > 0:29:10But even by the cruel standards of the Salon,
0:29:10 > 0:29:14the jury of 1863 was particularly harsh.
0:29:15 > 0:29:19Of the 5,000 or so pictures sent in,
0:29:19 > 0:29:24the Salon of 1863 rejected nearly half. It was a massacre.
0:29:24 > 0:29:27But also a big political mistake,
0:29:27 > 0:29:34because among the artists rejected by this particularly arrogant French jury
0:29:34 > 0:29:40was the Emperor's favourite landscape painter, who immediately complained to his sire.
0:29:43 > 0:29:48Napoleon III rushed over for a special Salon preview,
0:29:48 > 0:29:52and was appalled to find his taste being questioned so brutally.
0:29:52 > 0:29:58So, he had one of the unlikeliest brainwaves in the history of modern art
0:29:58 > 0:30:04and decided to put on a salon of the rejected works,
0:30:04 > 0:30:06the Salon des Refuses.
0:30:09 > 0:30:12Housed in the same building as the official Salon,
0:30:12 > 0:30:17the rebel show quickly amassed a clutch of dismissive nicknames.
0:30:17 > 0:30:20The Salon of the Banished,
0:30:20 > 0:30:26the Salon of the Heretics, the Salon of the Pariahs.
0:30:28 > 0:30:34Manet showed three paintings, arranged together like a modern altar piece.
0:30:34 > 0:30:36On either side, a Spanish subject.
0:30:36 > 0:30:41And in the middle, a picture that everyone noticed
0:30:41 > 0:30:46and which caused them to gibber and giggle.
0:30:46 > 0:30:47GIGGLING
0:30:51 > 0:30:55Today, it's one of the most famous images in art
0:30:55 > 0:30:59but when it first appeared, at the Salon des Refuses of 1863,
0:30:59 > 0:31:03The Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe, or as we rather clunkily call it,
0:31:03 > 0:31:09The Luncheon On The Grass, inspired huge amounts of raucous laughter.
0:31:11 > 0:31:16"Some seek ideal beauty", smirked a typical critic,
0:31:16 > 0:31:20"Monsieur Manet seeks ideal ugliness."
0:31:23 > 0:31:27In later years, later centuries, there would be many occasions when
0:31:27 > 0:31:33the public would turn up in droves to have a good laugh at modern art.
0:31:33 > 0:31:36So it's important to remember that 1863,
0:31:36 > 0:31:43the year they all laughed at Manet, was the start of that awful tradition.
0:31:47 > 0:31:53Manet's most obvious ambition in the Dejeuner was to modernise a famous old master,
0:31:53 > 0:31:56one of the Louvre's one most precious possessions,
0:31:56 > 0:31:59Le Concert Champetre,
0:31:59 > 0:32:03attributed in those days to Giorgione.
0:32:03 > 0:32:08Two fleshy renaissance nymphs loll around a classical landscape
0:32:08 > 0:32:10with a pair of male musicians.
0:32:10 > 0:32:14The boys have kept their clothes on.
0:32:14 > 0:32:17The girls haven't.
0:32:21 > 0:32:25This idea, that the men were dressed and the women weren't,
0:32:25 > 0:32:27was what Manet took most obviously from Giorgione.
0:32:27 > 0:32:32It was also the chief reason for all the giggles.
0:32:36 > 0:32:39The girl they guffawed was some common whore
0:32:39 > 0:32:43from the Bois de Boulogne, a fille de plaisir.
0:32:43 > 0:32:45The men were callow students,
0:32:45 > 0:32:51so uncouth they hadn't even taken their hats off in her presence.
0:32:51 > 0:32:54The woman has the features of Manet's favourite new model,
0:32:54 > 0:32:55Victorine Meurant,
0:32:55 > 0:33:00who stares out at us with that compelling directness
0:33:00 > 0:33:03that Manet seemed always to notice in her.
0:33:03 > 0:33:06It's been suggested, though, that the body in the painting
0:33:06 > 0:33:10was actually modelled by Suzanne Leenhoff and that Manet
0:33:10 > 0:33:15added Victorine's face later to disguise Suzanne's presence.
0:33:15 > 0:33:18I'm rather inclined to believe that.
0:33:20 > 0:33:23It's a bulky, fleshy, Rubensian body,
0:33:23 > 0:33:26with generous rolls of fat behind her neck
0:33:26 > 0:33:31and eminently graspable love handles around her waist.
0:33:31 > 0:33:36Those are Suzanne's dimensions, not Victorine's.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40The student in the middle, the one with the gormless expression,
0:33:40 > 0:33:45was modelled by Suzanne's brother, Ferdinand Leenhoff, a sculptor.
0:33:45 > 0:33:47He's basically a cipher in the picture,
0:33:47 > 0:33:49he doesn't really mean much.
0:33:49 > 0:33:54But the other student, he was posed by Manet's two brothers,
0:33:54 > 0:33:58Eugene and Gustav, who took turns at being him.
0:34:00 > 0:34:03Now, the actual pose of the second student was borrowed from
0:34:03 > 0:34:07a famous painting by Raphael of the Judgement of Paris.
0:34:08 > 0:34:11If you look in the lower right hand corner of the Raphael,
0:34:11 > 0:34:16you'll see some river gods, arranged in the same way as Manet's group.
0:34:17 > 0:34:21There's something else to notice about this student with a hat,
0:34:21 > 0:34:23something that's often overlooked.
0:34:23 > 0:34:26His actual pose is a mirror image
0:34:26 > 0:34:30of Michelangelo's Adam from the Sistine ceiling.
0:34:30 > 0:34:33He's in exactly the same pose.
0:34:33 > 0:34:38So, Manet's brother is a kind of Adam in reverse.
0:34:41 > 0:34:43What about her, the figure at the back?
0:34:43 > 0:34:45When the painting was first shown,
0:34:45 > 0:34:47she was the subject of much merriment.
0:34:47 > 0:34:52People complained that her scale was wrong, she was much too large.
0:34:52 > 0:34:56But worse than that, what's she actually doing?
0:34:56 > 0:34:59She seems to be douching herself,
0:34:59 > 0:35:03washing her privates intimately.
0:35:03 > 0:35:06Now, when do French women do that?
0:35:08 > 0:35:12Manet himself enjoyed referring to this outrageous image
0:35:12 > 0:35:17of contemporary sexual frolics as, "la partie carree."
0:35:17 > 0:35:20What we would call, a foursome.
0:35:20 > 0:35:23And much ink has been spilt in the search
0:35:23 > 0:35:26for the real meaning of Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe.
0:35:28 > 0:35:35It could just have been a scene from modern life, a bunch of naughty students having some outdoor fun.
0:35:35 > 0:35:39But would that have been worth all this pictorial effort?
0:35:39 > 0:35:43It could be a sex scene, pure and simple.
0:35:43 > 0:35:47But it feels much too loaded for that.
0:35:48 > 0:35:52Or, most intriguingly of all, it could be some veiled rumination
0:35:52 > 0:35:54upon Manet's family situation.
0:35:56 > 0:36:02Just before the picture was finished, in 1862, Manet's father,
0:36:02 > 0:36:04the respectable High Court judge,
0:36:04 > 0:36:09died from what we now know was tertiary syphilis.
0:36:09 > 0:36:16And the Manet family set about insuring that his reputation would remains spotless
0:36:16 > 0:36:22and that the subject of his possible fathering of Leon was never aired.
0:36:24 > 0:36:29Unless, that is, you study the paintings of his son,
0:36:29 > 0:36:34where the sins of the father sound a mysterious but insistent echo.
0:36:37 > 0:36:41Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe was a deliberate act of provocation.
0:36:41 > 0:36:47Public bathing in the nude was illegal at the time, and so was mixed bathing.
0:36:47 > 0:36:52Everyone in that picture could have been brought here,
0:36:52 > 0:36:53to the Palais de Justice,
0:36:53 > 0:36:58before Manet's father and prosecuted for immoral behaviour.
0:36:58 > 0:37:02A subject with which August Manet was,
0:37:02 > 0:37:06of course, personally conversant.
0:37:10 > 0:37:13There are telling but secretive details to the Dejeuner...
0:37:13 > 0:37:19Hovering in the foliage, its wings outspread, is a bird, a bullfinch.
0:37:19 > 0:37:25In Renaissance art, a hovering bird invariably represented
0:37:25 > 0:37:32the Holy Ghost, disguised as a dove, arriving with grace at a baptism.
0:37:34 > 0:37:38Next to Victorine's discarded clothes,
0:37:38 > 0:37:40down in the corner, was a frog.
0:37:40 > 0:37:45In religious art, frogs, toads and other creepy-crawlies,
0:37:45 > 0:37:48were miniature embodiments of Satan,
0:37:48 > 0:37:53slithery stand-ins for the wicked snake that tempted Eve
0:37:53 > 0:37:57in the Garden of Eden and led to our downfall.
0:37:58 > 0:38:04So is the Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe a disguised portrayal of Adam and Eve,
0:38:04 > 0:38:07a painting about the fall of man?
0:38:07 > 0:38:08Nearly.
0:38:08 > 0:38:11But Manet is never that explicit.
0:38:11 > 0:38:13That's not how he works.
0:38:13 > 0:38:16He's a suggester of possibilities,
0:38:16 > 0:38:19an implier, a hinter.
0:38:19 > 0:38:25But I do think he had his father's lapses in mind when he painted this.
0:38:28 > 0:38:33Old master sins are being cleverly re-imagined for the modern age
0:38:33 > 0:38:39by a brazen Eve from the boulevards and a foppish, studenty Adam,
0:38:39 > 0:38:43lounging provocatively around a cut-price modern paradise
0:38:43 > 0:38:50that has been lost for the same old Garden of Eden reasons...
0:38:51 > 0:38:54Because a man couldn't keep his hands off a woman.
0:38:54 > 0:38:57Because a High Court judge died of syphilis
0:38:57 > 0:39:02a few months before this picture was finished.
0:39:17 > 0:39:19There are various stories about
0:39:19 > 0:39:21how and where Manet met Victorine Meurant.
0:39:21 > 0:39:28She became his greatest model, but also, a very juicy mystery.
0:39:30 > 0:39:32According to one version of the story,
0:39:32 > 0:39:35which I must say I would love to believe,
0:39:35 > 0:39:39he actually bumped into her outside his father's law courts.
0:39:39 > 0:39:44She'd been brought before the judge for illegal street singing.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47Manet was on the way to meet his father, he noticed her,
0:39:47 > 0:39:51he liked her, and he put her in his art.
0:39:51 > 0:39:54Wouldn't that be glorious if it were true?
0:39:57 > 0:40:01Another version is that he saw her coming out of a cafe
0:40:01 > 0:40:05where she'd been performing that evening,
0:40:05 > 0:40:09her guitar tucked quickly under her arm, on the way to another gig.
0:40:12 > 0:40:16And that's certainly how he painted her in a delicious early portrayal.
0:40:16 > 0:40:17She's in a hurry.
0:40:17 > 0:40:19She's hitched up her skirts
0:40:19 > 0:40:23and she's nibbling so enticingly at some cherries,
0:40:23 > 0:40:25the fruits of paradise.
0:40:27 > 0:40:31But the most likely scenario is that he came across her modelling somewhere.
0:40:31 > 0:40:36She modelled for Couture, for instance, so he could have seen her there.
0:40:36 > 0:40:38And something about her captivated him.
0:40:38 > 0:40:41You can see it in all the paintings he made of her.
0:40:41 > 0:40:44It doesn't surprise me at all, because she is,
0:40:44 > 0:40:48on the evidence of his art, a strangely captivating woman.
0:41:04 > 0:41:07STORM CLOUDS RUMBLE AND A CROW CAWS
0:41:09 > 0:41:14In October 1863, Manet set off once again for Holland.
0:41:14 > 0:41:20He had been before, to look at Dutch painting, but this trip was different.
0:41:20 > 0:41:23This time, he was getting married.
0:41:25 > 0:41:28No one in Paris had been told about it.
0:41:28 > 0:41:32Baudelaire only found out about the wedding on the day Manet left.
0:41:32 > 0:41:35They had been together for a decade or more
0:41:35 > 0:41:39but none of Manet's friends had met Suzanne or knew anything about her.
0:41:41 > 0:41:45So we're dealing here with an exceptionally discreet
0:41:45 > 0:41:49and secretive individual, a man who gave nothing away.
0:41:49 > 0:41:52No wonder his art is so hard to grasp.
0:41:55 > 0:41:58I'm reminded of something the painter Mark Rothko once said,
0:41:58 > 0:42:03"There's more power in telling little than in telling all."
0:42:06 > 0:42:09Suzanne remains a shadowy figure.
0:42:09 > 0:42:13We know she was plump, she played the piano, and that's about it.
0:42:13 > 0:42:18Manet kept her away from his friends, and seemed almost
0:42:18 > 0:42:23to segregate her in a separate compartment of his life.
0:42:29 > 0:42:33The wedding was a glum affair. Manet arrived in early October
0:42:33 > 0:42:36and stayed for three weeks, which is the time needed
0:42:36 > 0:42:39for the bands to be published in the town hall.
0:42:39 > 0:42:42No friends were invited, no family.
0:42:42 > 0:42:48Leon wasn't here because he'd been sent temporarily to boarding school.
0:42:48 > 0:42:54And so, on 28th October, two days before Suzanne's 34th birthday,
0:42:54 > 0:42:58they were married in a civil ceremony in this town hall.
0:43:02 > 0:43:07What the good people of the town made of this elegant French dandy's
0:43:07 > 0:43:13marriage to their plump and dowdy kinswoman isn't recorded,
0:43:13 > 0:43:16but I imagine it surprised them too.
0:43:16 > 0:43:21Just before he left for Holland, Manet, who was now 32,
0:43:21 > 0:43:25had managed to finish the second of his most infamous nudes.
0:43:25 > 0:43:31And this time, the irresistible siren with the flower in her hair
0:43:31 > 0:43:34was definitely not Suzanne Leenhoff.
0:43:34 > 0:43:37But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
0:43:43 > 0:43:46Paris in the 1860s was the place to be.
0:43:46 > 0:43:52Modern life in all its busy shades was crowding in on the city.
0:43:59 > 0:44:04Manet's Paris was so fashionable. There was plenty of money around
0:44:04 > 0:44:08and plenty of new urban pleasures on which to spend it.
0:44:08 > 0:44:13Trains, racecourses, dance halls...
0:44:13 > 0:44:18And an elegant new breed of city-dweller had emerged to partake of these new urban pleasures.
0:44:18 > 0:44:25The poet Baudelaire christened this new type of city-dweller, "the flaneur."
0:44:28 > 0:44:30What's a flaneur?
0:44:30 > 0:44:32Well, I'm definitely not one.
0:44:32 > 0:44:34I'm too slobbish.
0:44:34 > 0:44:40The flaneur is the most elegant chap at the races, the one in the best clothes,
0:44:40 > 0:44:44who moves exquisitely through the crowd with his gloves and his cane.
0:44:47 > 0:44:50Manet, who was always very careful about his appearance,
0:44:50 > 0:44:54and famous for his jaunty cravats and his yellow gloves,
0:44:54 > 0:45:00was the flaneur's flaneur, an impeccable example of the breed.
0:45:01 > 0:45:04Flaneurs had lots of leisure time,
0:45:04 > 0:45:09which they spent going to the opera or taking in the races at Longchamp.
0:45:09 > 0:45:10On a summer's day,
0:45:10 > 0:45:15they might go boating on the Seine with a new female acquaintance
0:45:15 > 0:45:20that they'd recently made at one of the fashionable dance halls
0:45:20 > 0:45:23that were springing up all over Paris.
0:45:24 > 0:45:29Unless, of course, Monsieur already had a mistress, which most messieurs did.
0:45:29 > 0:45:33And it was to her boudoir that he would repair at the end of the day
0:45:33 > 0:45:39for a few extra-marital thrills, an added soupcon of l'amour.
0:45:42 > 0:45:46Of all Manet's pointed evocations of modern life,
0:45:46 > 0:45:50the one that seemed to annoy the most people was this one.
0:45:50 > 0:45:55Olympia, the most notorious courtesan in Napoleon III's Paris.
0:45:57 > 0:46:01Olympia was unveiled at the Paris Salon of 1865
0:46:01 > 0:46:06and the sight of her did to the 19th century French audience
0:46:06 > 0:46:10more or less what stepping on the tail of a cat does to a cat...
0:46:10 > 0:46:13It made them very angry.
0:46:13 > 0:46:17Manet was used to bad reviews.
0:46:17 > 0:46:22His Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe had already been mauled by the critics.
0:46:22 > 0:46:26But nothing could have prepared him for the onslaught of hatred
0:46:26 > 0:46:30and mockery that accompanied the unveiling of Olympia.
0:46:31 > 0:46:34"A sort of female gorilla",
0:46:34 > 0:46:37complained Le Moniteur Universel.
0:46:37 > 0:46:42"The putrefying body recalls the horrors of the morgue,"
0:46:42 > 0:46:44spat Victor de Jankovic.
0:46:44 > 0:46:48"Manet has made himself the apostle of the ugly,"
0:46:48 > 0:46:51decided Felix Jarreur.
0:46:53 > 0:47:00Now either I'm blind or people in the 1860s had completely different eyesight from me,
0:47:00 > 0:47:03because however much I look at Olympia,
0:47:03 > 0:47:07I can't see anything ugly or repulsive about her.
0:47:09 > 0:47:13I suppose she's quite short, but a gorilla?!
0:47:13 > 0:47:17And is this enticing paleness of hers
0:47:17 > 0:47:20really the colouring of the morgue?
0:47:20 > 0:47:25Isn't she rather tender and beautiful
0:47:25 > 0:47:30and a touch nervous about being examined so frankly by us?
0:47:31 > 0:47:35Manet based her on Titian's celebrated Venus of Urbino
0:47:35 > 0:47:38and one of the things he was trying to do
0:47:38 > 0:47:43was to paint a modern Venus for Paris in the 1860s,
0:47:43 > 0:47:45a working equivalent of a goddess.
0:47:47 > 0:47:52But the name Olympia had other connotations, naughty ones.
0:47:52 > 0:47:55Not only was it the kind of stage name used by
0:47:55 > 0:47:58high-class prostitutes at the time,
0:47:58 > 0:48:04who loved to call themselves Octavia or Artemisia or Aspasia,
0:48:04 > 0:48:10Olympia was also the name of one of the most rapacious courtesans
0:48:10 > 0:48:14in history, the notorious Olympia Maidalchini.
0:48:16 > 0:48:19Olympia Maidalchini was the mistress of Innocent X,
0:48:19 > 0:48:22that seemingly formidable Baroque Pope
0:48:22 > 0:48:27who had been painted by Manet's great hero, Velazquez.
0:48:29 > 0:48:34Velazquez gave us an Innocent X who seems so stern and fierce.
0:48:34 > 0:48:42But in real life, Olympia Maldacini had Innocent X in the palm of her hand.
0:48:42 > 0:48:46They called her, "La Papessa", the Lady Pope.
0:48:46 > 0:48:49And for more than a decade in the 17th century,
0:48:49 > 0:48:53Olympia Maldacini ruled the Catholic Church.
0:48:55 > 0:49:01So this Olympia, Manet's Olympia, arrived on the Salon's stage
0:49:01 > 0:49:05with a dangerous reputation already in place.
0:49:05 > 0:49:08He shows her stretched out on a bed.
0:49:08 > 0:49:10There's a flower in her hair,
0:49:10 > 0:49:15a little black lace around her neck, and on her wrist, a bracelet.
0:49:18 > 0:49:22The bracelet contained an actual lock of Manet's hair,
0:49:22 > 0:49:26cut off when he was a boy and carried around by his mum.
0:49:26 > 0:49:28Make of that what you will.
0:49:31 > 0:49:35So Olympia presents herself to us on her bed. And her servant girl,
0:49:35 > 0:49:41a mysterious presence at the back, is bringing in a bunch of flowers.
0:49:41 > 0:49:43Who are they from?
0:49:46 > 0:49:50This is where the action gets really interesting and problematic.
0:49:50 > 0:49:55The way Olympia is looking out at us and the way that the servant girl
0:49:55 > 0:50:00is showing her the flowers, makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion
0:50:00 > 0:50:07that we out here, the picture's spectators, are the clients she's waiting for.
0:50:07 > 0:50:10We're the ones who sent her the flowers.
0:50:10 > 0:50:14We're the next volunteers for her bed.
0:50:16 > 0:50:19This was what was so annoying about the picture.
0:50:19 > 0:50:25Every man at the Salon was being accused of being Olympia's client,
0:50:25 > 0:50:32of visiting brothels and having mistresses, of paying for love.
0:50:32 > 0:50:34And since all of them were doing exactly that,
0:50:34 > 0:50:40Olympia hit a very uncomfortable nail right on the head.
0:50:42 > 0:50:48The detail that particularly annoyed people and caused the most giggles,
0:50:48 > 0:50:50was the black cat at the bottom of the bed.
0:50:50 > 0:50:53In Titian's original,
0:50:53 > 0:50:58it had been a curled up dog, representing fidelity.
0:50:58 > 0:51:00But in Manet's outrageous re-imagining,
0:51:00 > 0:51:04the loyal dog is replaced by an angry black pussy,
0:51:04 > 0:51:08with its tail stuck provocatively in the air.
0:51:08 > 0:51:12See how cattily it turns in our direction.
0:51:12 > 0:51:16"Stay away from my mistress!", it seems to be hissing.
0:51:16 > 0:51:18"You cad!"
0:51:27 > 0:51:32For many years, no one was quite sure when Manet had painted some of his most important pictures.
0:51:32 > 0:51:35Then Juliet began to research these matters
0:51:35 > 0:51:38and finally tracked down this important studio.
0:51:38 > 0:51:41Tell us about this place where we're standing?
0:51:41 > 0:51:46It strikes me as rather different from most of the Haussmann period architecture you see around here?
0:51:46 > 0:51:52Well, yes, because this was really when Paris was beginning to be developed.
0:51:52 > 0:51:56This area where we are now was in the middle of nowhere.
0:51:56 > 0:51:58It was open countryside.
0:51:58 > 0:52:03There was a great plain of, sort of, bare, derelict ground
0:52:03 > 0:52:06between here and the Batignolles, for example.
0:52:06 > 0:52:09So, Manet moved into this new building
0:52:09 > 0:52:13and he found this very splendid studio.
0:52:13 > 0:52:15KNOCKING
0:52:15 > 0:52:19Allo? Madame, Madame Boulain? Bonjour.
0:52:19 > 0:52:21- Bonjour.- Merci.
0:52:21 > 0:52:23Merci.
0:52:26 > 0:52:29Je suis Waldemar Januszczak.
0:52:29 > 0:52:33Madame Wilson-Bareau, experte de Manet!
0:52:33 > 0:52:35Bonjour.
0:52:35 > 0:52:39THEY EXCHANGE GREETINGS IN FRENCH
0:52:39 > 0:52:43So, Juliet, this is the space as Manet would have known it?
0:52:43 > 0:52:48More or less, yes. I suspect that it wouldn't have had
0:52:48 > 0:52:52a staircase and as big a balcony.
0:52:52 > 0:52:56And I think he just had a cube, basically.
0:52:56 > 0:52:58So, I'm imagining now
0:52:58 > 0:53:03that we're in a kind of tall, light-filled space,
0:53:03 > 0:53:08and three deep on the walls, some of Manet's greatest pictures.
0:53:08 > 0:53:14And we know, unlike many artists, that Manet's studio was,
0:53:14 > 0:53:18as it were, like, it had a monastery feel to it.
0:53:18 > 0:53:22There was nothing in it that wasn't useful.
0:53:22 > 0:53:26There was probably a couch or two, some chairs, a table, and he would
0:53:26 > 0:53:30have had pictures stacked in racks and with their face to the wall.
0:53:30 > 0:53:34So, Olympia may have been over here...
0:53:34 > 0:53:37- Exactly.- The Old Musician over here.
0:53:37 > 0:53:40Yes, one thing that one has to remember is that
0:53:40 > 0:53:44paintings were not painted in the twinkling of an eye.
0:53:44 > 0:53:49We know, for example, that Olympia must have been begun perhaps even
0:53:49 > 0:53:53as early as the late '50s, or certainly 1860 onwards.
0:53:53 > 0:53:57I'm sure he goes on adding bits.
0:53:57 > 0:54:02I think he added the black cat to Olympia just before it went into the Salon.
0:54:02 > 0:54:04- A final touch?- The final touch.
0:54:04 > 0:54:06MEWING
0:54:07 > 0:54:11The museum in Mannheim, Germany.
0:54:11 > 0:54:14A big statement of a building.
0:54:14 > 0:54:20It dates from 1907 and because it's so stern and bossy,
0:54:20 > 0:54:24I've always thought it's a particularly suitable location
0:54:24 > 0:54:28for one of Manet's most important pictures.
0:54:33 > 0:54:38One of the hardest things a painter can do, any painter,
0:54:38 > 0:54:42is to capture a resonant moment of their own history.
0:54:42 > 0:54:47To make great art out of great politics.
0:54:47 > 0:54:52No-one has managed to make an image of the Iraq war, for instance,
0:54:52 > 0:54:56that will really speak to subsequent generations.
0:54:56 > 0:54:58And in the annals of modern art, I can only think
0:54:58 > 0:55:04of two great paintings that address the history of their own times
0:55:04 > 0:55:08with appropriate power and resonance.
0:55:10 > 0:55:14One is Picasso's Guernica, of course,
0:55:14 > 0:55:20the ultimate 20th Century reflection upon the barbarism of war.
0:55:20 > 0:55:23And the other...
0:55:23 > 0:55:26Is in here.
0:55:26 > 0:55:31Manet's Execution Of Maximilian.
0:55:31 > 0:55:36MILITARY-STYLE MUSIC PLAYS
0:55:37 > 0:55:41It shows the climax of Napoleon III's
0:55:41 > 0:55:46most inglorious foreign adventure, his Iraq, his Vietnam.
0:55:46 > 0:55:49We're actually in Mexico.
0:55:49 > 0:55:52What on earth are the French doing here?
0:55:52 > 0:55:54A good question.
0:55:54 > 0:55:58The French didn't like the Americans. They still don't.
0:55:58 > 0:56:04So they decided to interfere in the affairs of Mexico and to install
0:56:04 > 0:56:09a puppet emperor, loyal to the French, on the American doorstep.
0:56:09 > 0:56:15The Mexicans, however, already had a ruler they'd voted for themselves.
0:56:15 > 0:56:21So, in 1863, Napoleon III engineered what we now call,
0:56:21 > 0:56:24"some regime change".
0:56:24 > 0:56:31He set in his troops and forcibly imposed an Austrian archduke,
0:56:31 > 0:56:35Ferdinand Maximilian, on the Mexican people.
0:56:38 > 0:56:41Maximilian was well-meaning and naive.
0:56:41 > 0:56:45But he wasn't Mexican and he shouldn't have been here.
0:56:47 > 0:56:49It didn't last long.
0:56:49 > 0:56:55The French soon learned that keeping a large army in Mexico was impossibly costly.
0:56:55 > 0:56:58So, after a couple of disgruntled years,
0:56:58 > 0:57:01they pulled out and abandoned their puppet emperor.
0:57:01 > 0:57:08And Maximilian, loathed by the people, was overthrown, hunted down,
0:57:08 > 0:57:14and as we can see, executed, on June 19th, 1867,
0:57:14 > 0:57:20with a couple of his loyal Mexican generals.
0:57:21 > 0:57:25Reports of the execution quickly reached Paris and Manet,
0:57:25 > 0:57:31the staunch Republican who needed little encouragement to despise Napoleon III,
0:57:31 > 0:57:34began work immediately on a war picture
0:57:34 > 0:57:38that would powerfully indict the behaviour of the French.
0:57:39 > 0:57:44His first version, based on sketchy newspaper reports,
0:57:44 > 0:57:47is a wispy, impressionistic thing.
0:57:47 > 0:57:49Some men in sombreros,
0:57:49 > 0:57:53shooting into the mists as the smoke swirls doomily.
0:57:55 > 0:58:00As more and more information about the execution got back to Paris,
0:58:00 > 0:58:06Manet kept returning doggedly to the image and starting again.
0:58:08 > 0:58:11This painting in the National Gallery in London,
0:58:11 > 0:58:15which was cut up after his death, was his second attempt.
0:58:16 > 0:58:19By now, he'd learned that the Mexican firing squad
0:58:19 > 0:58:24was dressed in uniforms very similar to the ones worn by the French.
0:58:24 > 0:58:31So, the Mexican firing squad becomes a surrogate French firing squad.
0:58:31 > 0:58:37And Maximilian is being killed by his own side.
0:58:37 > 0:58:41The National Gallery picture was set outside
0:58:41 > 0:58:44in a dry and scrubby Mexican landscape
0:58:44 > 0:58:50that wasn't claustrophobic enough for Manet, not intense enough.
0:58:50 > 0:58:54So for this, the final and greatest version,
0:58:54 > 0:58:57the culmination, the masterpiece,
0:58:57 > 0:59:04Manet puts his firing squad in front of a blank and immovable wall
0:59:04 > 0:59:08that seems somehow to concentrate the violence,
0:59:08 > 0:59:13and which brings to the scene some of that pent up,
0:59:13 > 0:59:16ceremonial intensity of a bullfight.
0:59:22 > 0:59:25That's Maximilian in his saintly sombrero,
0:59:25 > 0:59:30flanked by the two Mexican generals who stayed loyal to him,
0:59:30 > 0:59:35Thomas Mejia and Miguel Miramon.
0:59:35 > 0:59:39The firing squad really was that close.
0:59:39 > 0:59:42They were lousy shots and that's how it was done.
0:59:42 > 0:59:48But in reality, there were three firing squads, one for each victim.
0:59:48 > 0:59:53But Manet crowds them all together in one deadly block
0:59:53 > 0:59:56to focus the tragedy.
0:59:58 > 1:00:04The whole thing seems to be taking place in the slowest of slow motions.
1:00:04 > 1:00:08A constant playing and replaying of the scene that seems never
1:00:08 > 1:00:13to finish, like an irredeemable sin that can never be scrubbed away.
1:00:15 > 1:00:18This figure here fiddling with his gun is crucial.
1:00:18 > 1:00:23He's the soldier who will actually deliver the coup de grace
1:00:23 > 1:00:27that finally kills Maximilian.
1:00:27 > 1:00:31Because, of course, the execution was bungled.
1:00:31 > 1:00:38Most of the shots missed, and he had to go over to the struggling body,
1:00:38 > 1:00:44place his gun against Maximilian's chest and shoot him point blank.
1:00:46 > 1:00:49The face of this final soldier is actually
1:00:49 > 1:00:55a lightly disguised portrait of Napoleon III himself. Manet
1:00:55 > 1:01:01is accusing his emperor of being personally responsible for all this.
1:01:01 > 1:01:03Even more brilliantly,
1:01:03 > 1:01:07you see this shadow here?
1:01:07 > 1:01:09Who's casting that?
1:01:09 > 1:01:11Where does it come from?
1:01:11 > 1:01:15The only possible answer is from out here.
1:01:15 > 1:01:17We're the ones that are casting it.
1:01:17 > 1:01:20And that's the point. Whoever looks at this scene
1:01:20 > 1:01:25is being accused of being there and doing nothing.
1:01:28 > 1:01:34This act of immense pictorial daring lifts this great war painting
1:01:34 > 1:01:38into the realms of an historical masterpiece.
1:01:39 > 1:01:45Manet's Death of Maximilian is apportioning universal blame,
1:01:45 > 1:01:49and this deliberate entanglement of the man in the street
1:01:49 > 1:01:55with a faraway moment of history was new and modern.
1:02:00 > 1:02:04Perversely, the only place the painting was actually shown
1:02:04 > 1:02:09was America, where it went on a rather desultory tour in the 1870s.
1:02:09 > 1:02:14In France, it was never exhibited because it was censored.
1:02:14 > 1:02:19So it was only after Manet's death that we finally found out what he'd been up to.
1:02:24 > 1:02:29History didn't like Napoleon III much either, or so it seemed.
1:02:29 > 1:02:36Because in 1870, it arranged for him to go to war with the Prussians.
1:02:36 > 1:02:40And that was a battle the Little Emperor was never going to win.
1:02:42 > 1:02:45The Franco-Prussian War didn't last long.
1:02:45 > 1:02:51The French, with Napoleon at their head, were no match for Bismarck and the Germans.
1:02:51 > 1:02:54The fighting was quickly over.
1:02:54 > 1:02:58Here in Paris though, the Prussians decided to starve
1:02:58 > 1:03:03the enemy into submission, and that took much longer.
1:03:05 > 1:03:11Bismarck had predicted that eight days without cafe au lait would break the Parisians.
1:03:11 > 1:03:13But he was wrong.
1:03:15 > 1:03:20Paris held out for months. Manet sent Suzanne off to the Pyrenees
1:03:20 > 1:03:25while he stayed behind bravely as a gunner in the artillery.
1:03:25 > 1:03:32And this place, the Jardin des Plantes, was to prove an invaluable resource for the besieged Parisians,
1:03:32 > 1:03:37because pretty much everything in here could be cooked and then eaten.
1:03:40 > 1:03:44On the 99th day of the siege, the Christmas menu
1:03:44 > 1:03:50began with stuffed donkeys' heads and elephant consomme,
1:03:50 > 1:03:58and progressed to roast camel, kangaroo stew and wolf haunch in antelope sauce.
1:04:00 > 1:04:02Bonjour.
1:04:02 > 1:04:04Lolly, s'il vous plait.
1:04:05 > 1:04:10The Manet family cat was eaten, and the writer Theophile Gaultier
1:04:10 > 1:04:15describes a delicious new recipe that everyone in Paris was trying.
1:04:15 > 1:04:17Rat pate.
1:04:21 > 1:04:26Although the siege of Paris was historically crucial because it led
1:04:26 > 1:04:29at last to the overthrow of Napoleon III,
1:04:29 > 1:04:34aesthetically, it triggered nothing much in Manet's art.
1:04:34 > 1:04:36All he had time to scribble down
1:04:36 > 1:04:43was this grubby snow scene of Paris during the siege. To keep in contact
1:04:43 > 1:04:48with the outside world, the French began using hot air balloons.
1:04:48 > 1:04:54And the other great invention of the times was the pigeon post.
1:04:54 > 1:04:59Manet's pigeon post letters to Suzanne have survived, and they are,
1:04:59 > 1:05:05I suggest, the most important things to come out of the siege.
1:05:07 > 1:05:10They're astonishingly tender.
1:05:10 > 1:05:14"I put pictures of you all round the bedroom," he writes.
1:05:14 > 1:05:18"So every day, you're the first and the last thing I see."
1:05:21 > 1:05:23On New Year's Day 1871,
1:05:23 > 1:05:26the pigeons carried a letter from him to her
1:05:26 > 1:05:29regretting that for the first time
1:05:29 > 1:05:34since they'd met, he couldn't give her a New Year's kiss.
1:05:34 > 1:05:38Manet is always presented as a cool,
1:05:38 > 1:05:43elegant, well-dressed Parisian flaneur.
1:05:43 > 1:05:45And most of the time, that's what he was.
1:05:45 > 1:05:51But among the secrets that he kept so fiercely hidden from the world
1:05:51 > 1:05:54was the secret of his own tenderness.
1:05:54 > 1:05:59This deep and warm love he had for his wife.
1:05:59 > 1:06:03This sentimentality he was capable of.
1:06:05 > 1:06:08It's an important insight, because it helps us to notice
1:06:08 > 1:06:11how so many of the women in his art
1:06:11 > 1:06:18are having their vulnerability noted by a caring and besotted male gaze.
1:06:18 > 1:06:23These are looks that are often described as blank,
1:06:23 > 1:06:27but there's nothing blank about them at all.
1:06:29 > 1:06:33Many beautiful women passed through Manet's art.
1:06:33 > 1:06:35He was a notorious charmer.
1:06:35 > 1:06:38Witty, handsome, clever.
1:06:38 > 1:06:42Women liked him, and he repaid their interest
1:06:42 > 1:06:46by putting them in his pictures and making them irresistible.
1:06:49 > 1:06:51This dark beauty here,
1:06:51 > 1:06:57Berthe Morisot, was particularly taken with him, and he with her.
1:06:57 > 1:07:01He painted her 11 times,
1:07:01 > 1:07:06and never failed to respond to her dark, smouldering beauty.
1:07:08 > 1:07:11The Morisots were the same social class as the Manets.
1:07:11 > 1:07:14Well-to-do upper bourgeoisie.
1:07:14 > 1:07:20And just as I would send my daughters to have music lessons, so they sent their daughters to have
1:07:20 > 1:07:25art lessons, and Berthe decided to become a painter,
1:07:25 > 1:07:29which was unusual for a young woman at the time.
1:07:29 > 1:07:36She met Manet some time at the end of the 1860s, and he promptly put her into his art.
1:07:40 > 1:07:45This famous painting, Le Balcon, has been invented twice.
1:07:45 > 1:07:51Once by Goya in the 18th century, and again by Manet a century later.
1:07:51 > 1:07:56In both their cases, the balcony above the street houses
1:07:56 > 1:08:02an unreachable beauty, a femme fatale who is too high to touch.
1:08:03 > 1:08:10Something about Berthe Morisot reminded Manet of the Goya woman - dark-eyed, sexy.
1:08:10 > 1:08:14So he recreated Goya's painting and put her up here,
1:08:14 > 1:08:16where we just can't reach her.
1:08:18 > 1:08:24It's obvious that she got to him, but he was married and considerably older.
1:08:24 > 1:08:29So art historians have tied themselves into exquisite knots
1:08:29 > 1:08:33trying to decide whether they actually had an affair.
1:08:34 > 1:08:38It's clear from her letters that she hero-worshipped Manet.
1:08:38 > 1:08:45She fell into depressions when he wasn't there, and went through intense anorexic phases.
1:08:45 > 1:08:51When you look at his pictures of her, you feel you're intruding on a private relationship.
1:08:54 > 1:08:58Berthe Morisot went on to marry Manet's brother, Eugene,
1:08:58 > 1:09:04so she could finally sign herself Mrs E. Manet.
1:09:04 > 1:09:09My own view is that theirs was an unconsummated passion,
1:09:09 > 1:09:13full of frustrated desire on both sides.
1:09:13 > 1:09:17In real life, it must have been rather painful.
1:09:17 > 1:09:24But in artistic terms, it brought such a sizzle to his portrayals of her.
1:09:27 > 1:09:29Morisot did something else for Manet.
1:09:29 > 1:09:34As a painter herself, she was soon to be involved with the Impressionists,
1:09:34 > 1:09:40and her example was to have a delicate impact on Manet's touch.
1:09:40 > 1:09:45He never became a proper Impressionist himself, as we'll see.
1:09:45 > 1:09:51But he came close, and that was due, in some part, to her.
1:09:57 > 1:10:01You see those big red windows up on the first and second floor?
1:10:01 > 1:10:06Something exceptionally important in art happened up there.
1:10:06 > 1:10:10Because that's where Impressionism was born.
1:10:11 > 1:10:16In April 1874, a group of disaffected artists
1:10:16 > 1:10:23decided they'd had enough of being rejected by the Paris Salon, so they organised their own exhibition.
1:10:26 > 1:10:28It was a chaotic affair.
1:10:28 > 1:10:33The photographer Nadar had been using the space as a studio,
1:10:33 > 1:10:37but it had got too expensive for him and Nadar was moving on.
1:10:37 > 1:10:44In the meantime, he was happy to let the disaffected artists put on a show in there.
1:10:48 > 1:10:52The artists gave themselves an impressive sounding name -
1:10:52 > 1:10:57La Societe Anonyme Des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs.
1:10:57 > 1:11:00And on April 15th 1874,
1:11:00 > 1:11:06they opened the doors of Nadar's studio to the paying public.
1:11:06 > 1:11:09There were 30 artists in the show.
1:11:09 > 1:11:13Ten of the pictures were by someone called Degas.
1:11:13 > 1:11:18There was another nine by a man called Monet.
1:11:18 > 1:11:23Three by a certain Cezanne, and five by Pissarro.
1:11:23 > 1:11:29The entrance fee was one franc, and by the end of the day, 175 people
1:11:29 > 1:11:34could be bothered to climb up there and see what was inside.
1:11:35 > 1:11:38No-one liked it much.
1:11:38 > 1:11:41The reviews were coruscating.
1:11:41 > 1:11:44A particularly cynical reviewer, Louis Leroy,
1:11:44 > 1:11:48picked out a moody picture by Monet,
1:11:48 > 1:11:54painted of Le Havre at dawn, and called Impression Sunrise.
1:11:54 > 1:11:58"This bunch," he chuckled, "are just Impressionists."
1:11:58 > 1:12:01The name stuck, and from now on,
1:12:01 > 1:12:04the bunch would be known as "the Impressionists."
1:12:06 > 1:12:08Manet wasn't in the show.
1:12:08 > 1:12:12The others kept badgering him to join, but he refused.
1:12:12 > 1:12:18Altogether, the Impressionists had eight exhibitions, and Manet wasn't doing any of them.
1:12:18 > 1:12:24"I will never exhibit in the shack next door," he explained to Degas, haughtily.
1:12:24 > 1:12:28"I enter the Salon through the front door."
1:12:32 > 1:12:35But the Salon didn't want him, as usual.
1:12:35 > 1:12:38Half his pictures were rejected.
1:12:38 > 1:12:44And the attentions of this new gang of admirers began to seem rather appealing.
1:12:46 > 1:12:51Manet usually spent the summer by the sea. But in 1874,
1:12:51 > 1:12:53he decided to stay in Paris,
1:12:53 > 1:12:57painting in and around his family lands,
1:12:57 > 1:13:01with that Impressionist chap, Monet.
1:13:05 > 1:13:09Manet had known Monet for several years.
1:13:09 > 1:13:15And you know that confusion that people still feel today between Monet and Manet?
1:13:15 > 1:13:20Well, it was always there. The first time that Monet showed at the Paris Salon,
1:13:20 > 1:13:26in the same room as Manet in 1865, Manet was appalled
1:13:26 > 1:13:33and accused Monet of deliberately using the similarity between their names to get himself noticed.
1:13:35 > 1:13:38But after this shaky beginning, their friendship flourished.
1:13:38 > 1:13:44Monet said Manet is the "Raphael of water."
1:13:44 > 1:13:50Their relationship was based on two things, mutual respect and money.
1:13:50 > 1:13:57Manet was forever lending cash to the impoverished Monet, and Monet was forever asking for it.
1:14:01 > 1:14:07In the fine summer of 1874, Manet and Monet explored the river together.
1:14:08 > 1:14:13Monet had rigged up this floating studio for himself,
1:14:13 > 1:14:16a rowing boat with a makeshift tarpaulin for a cabin.
1:14:17 > 1:14:24Manet painted him at work there, while Madame Monet sat fretfully at the back avoiding the sun.
1:14:26 > 1:14:33Manet had worked outdoors before, on the beach, by the sea, but never as keenly as he did during
1:14:33 > 1:14:37this great Impressionist summer of his on the banks of the Seine.
1:14:40 > 1:14:45It was as if he was taking the Impressionists on at their own game,
1:14:45 > 1:14:48showing them all how it should be done.
1:14:51 > 1:14:55The most ambitious painting he did was a view from here,
1:14:55 > 1:15:00with Argenteuil on the other side of the river.
1:15:00 > 1:15:04It shows one of his wife's brothers, Rudolph Leenhoff, flirting
1:15:04 > 1:15:10on the river bank with a local floozy he'd picked up at a dance.
1:15:10 > 1:15:12We don't know her name.
1:15:12 > 1:15:18We just know that she was a femme de plaisir, and a frequent visitor to the local dance halls.
1:15:21 > 1:15:28When Manet showed his view of Argenteuil at the next Salon, the critics rounded on him again
1:15:28 > 1:15:34and had a particularly good laugh at the Mediterranean blue with which he'd painted the Seine.
1:15:34 > 1:15:38And it's true, there's not much blue outside there today.
1:15:38 > 1:15:42But get the sun in the right place, and turn up here at the right
1:15:42 > 1:15:47time of day, and you'll see that Manet was painting the truth.
1:15:47 > 1:15:51And you'll see all this coming to life.
1:15:55 > 1:16:01It isn't really the weather that interests him, or the play of light on the water.
1:16:01 > 1:16:09Surely what interests Manet more is the relationship between the couples.
1:16:09 > 1:16:16The picture they paint of the modern world, and its impact on the friendship between men and women.
1:16:18 > 1:16:25I came across an amusing cartoon the other day on the front cover of a satirical magazine, and it showed
1:16:25 > 1:16:31Manet wearing a wobbly crown and holding a vivid palette in his hand.
1:16:31 > 1:16:35The headline was, "The King of Impressionism."
1:16:35 > 1:16:38Because that's what everybody thought he was.
1:16:42 > 1:16:44But he wasn't really.
1:16:44 > 1:16:50The modern life that Manet painted wasn't carefree enough to be impressionist.
1:16:50 > 1:16:55That summer, he'd begun feeling pains in his legs.
1:16:55 > 1:16:57Walking had begun to hurt.
1:16:57 > 1:17:02And although he didn't know it yet, the terrible truth was
1:17:02 > 1:17:06that just like his father, he'd contracted syphilis.
1:17:10 > 1:17:13It was extremely prevalent. Of course, in the 19th century,
1:17:13 > 1:17:16it was an incurable condition, it was a major cause of
1:17:16 > 1:17:18nervous system problems,
1:17:18 > 1:17:21and a major cause of skin problems in France.
1:17:21 > 1:17:25There were whole hospitals dedicated to the treatment of syphilis.
1:17:25 > 1:17:28So people were aware, were they, of what they were dealing with?
1:17:28 > 1:17:31- They knew it was a sexually transmitted disease?- They did.
1:17:31 > 1:17:37It was like a physical manifestation of a kind of moral problem, so it had a mythology that grew up around it,
1:17:37 > 1:17:43it almost was a punishment for behaviour that was considered to be inappropriate at the time.
1:17:43 > 1:17:47With Manet, the initial symptoms were that he just felt pains in his legs?
1:17:47 > 1:17:52That's right. It sounds very much like he had a condition called tabes dorsalis,
1:17:52 > 1:17:58which is where syphilis affects the spine, particularly the back part of the spine which controls
1:17:58 > 1:18:02- movement in the legs.- That might be why he had to use a cane all the time?
1:18:02 > 1:18:06Absolutely, and one of the characteristic problems that people with syphilis get
1:18:06 > 1:18:12when it starts affecting their legs is that they are unable to balance without using visual cues.
1:18:12 > 1:18:15You become unsteady on your feet and more likely to fall.
1:18:15 > 1:18:22Manet seems to have been in, well, I suppose the modern phrase for it is in denial about what he had, because
1:18:22 > 1:18:28right to the very end, he just refused to accept that his condition was incurable.
1:18:28 > 1:18:35Absolutely. And up until penicillin came along, it WAS incurable.
1:18:36 > 1:18:38We don't know where he got it.
1:18:38 > 1:18:41We don't know who he got it from, or when.
1:18:41 > 1:18:48But we do know how grimly it began to affect him, now that he was in his 40s.
1:18:53 > 1:18:56Manet was too ill now to get out much.
1:18:56 > 1:19:02He stopped frequenting the cafes where he'd gone to gossip about art.
1:19:02 > 1:19:06The range of new urban pleasures still open to him
1:19:06 > 1:19:10was whittled down to two. The first of these
1:19:10 > 1:19:17was the company of beautiful young women, who passed through his studio and whom he'd paint
1:19:17 > 1:19:19in a series of delightful,
1:19:19 > 1:19:25impressionistic renderings of the perfect Parisian girl about town.
1:19:27 > 1:19:31And when he wasn't enjoying the spectacle of beautiful women,
1:19:31 > 1:19:36Manet began painting a series of gorgeous little still lifes.
1:19:36 > 1:19:39Just a few flowers in a vase,
1:19:39 > 1:19:44quick-fire evocations of an imperishable spring.
1:19:46 > 1:19:48What Manet's friends could never have suspected
1:19:48 > 1:19:51was that against all the odds,
1:19:51 > 1:19:56this man who was having such trouble painting little flower studies
1:19:56 > 1:20:01still had one huge statement in him.
1:20:01 > 1:20:05Manet surprised everyone by somehow finding the strength
1:20:05 > 1:20:10and the ambition to produce one final masterpiece.
1:20:16 > 1:20:20In 1869, a new nightclub opened in Paris.
1:20:20 > 1:20:24It was where everyone went, the new place to be.
1:20:24 > 1:20:28Its original name was the Folies de Trevise, but the Duc de Trevise
1:20:28 > 1:20:34objected, so the name was changed to the Folies-Bergere.
1:20:36 > 1:20:38Why did the Duke object?
1:20:38 > 1:20:41Because of what went on at the Folies in those days.
1:20:41 > 1:20:45The flirting, the drinking, the prostitution.
1:20:46 > 1:20:49Everyone paid two francs to get in.
1:20:49 > 1:20:54Young girls, old girls and those in between.
1:20:54 > 1:20:57So the decadence here was democratic.
1:20:59 > 1:21:01Manet was a regular visitor.
1:21:01 > 1:21:05He could lose himself in the smoke and forget his illness.
1:21:05 > 1:21:10At the Folies-Bergere, nobody noticed that he needed a cane now to walk with.
1:21:10 > 1:21:15One night, he encountered a particular barmaid.
1:21:15 > 1:21:17Her name was Suzon.
1:21:17 > 1:21:22Not Suzanne, but Suzon, which was close enough for Manet.
1:21:22 > 1:21:27So he asked her to pose for him, and painted her so memorably.
1:21:31 > 1:21:37The result is perhaps his most involving and thought-provoking picture.
1:21:37 > 1:21:41It hangs now at the Courtauld Institute in London.
1:21:41 > 1:21:46And ever since it was painted in the winter of 1882,
1:21:46 > 1:21:50people have puzzled over it.
1:21:50 > 1:21:54Suzon stands at the bar and gazes sadly into space.
1:21:54 > 1:21:56At least, I think she's sad.
1:21:56 > 1:22:00Others disagree. This elusive look on her face
1:22:00 > 1:22:04has been described as blank, bored,
1:22:04 > 1:22:09over-made up and even under-made up.
1:22:09 > 1:22:11There's no consensus.
1:22:13 > 1:22:17She's dressed in the typical barmaid uniform of the Folies.
1:22:17 > 1:22:21Black bodice, frilly neckline, except for these flowers
1:22:21 > 1:22:24across her decolletage.
1:22:24 > 1:22:27Those are unusual. At the Folies-Bergere,
1:22:27 > 1:22:32the barmaids generally displayed a little more of themselves.
1:22:32 > 1:22:35There's even a naughty cartoon on the subject.
1:22:42 > 1:22:48So she's at the bar, and she's serving a customer who's out here, where I am.
1:22:48 > 1:22:52But as you can see, if I'm here and the cameraman is behind me,
1:22:52 > 1:23:00then the three of us form a horribly confusing and ugly reflection, overlapping and messy.
1:23:00 > 1:23:05So Manet, in a brilliant and fearless bit of modern picture-making,
1:23:05 > 1:23:09has actually moved the reflection from behind Suzon,
1:23:09 > 1:23:13where you can't see it, to over here, where you can.
1:23:15 > 1:23:21Bookloads of speculation have been published about this mysterious reflection.
1:23:21 > 1:23:25But the simple truth is, if it had stayed where it should be,
1:23:25 > 1:23:28we couldn't have seen it.
1:23:29 > 1:23:35In the reflection, Suzon is serving a top-hatted chap with a moustache,
1:23:35 > 1:23:38rather blurred and insubstantial.
1:23:38 > 1:23:44He's been described as sinister, but shadowy is a better word.
1:23:44 > 1:23:50And of course, he is you, in your Belle-Epoque form.
1:23:52 > 1:23:54There are other details to note as well.
1:23:54 > 1:23:58Up in the corner, a pair of dangling legs,
1:23:58 > 1:24:02a trapeze artiste is performing for the crowd.
1:24:02 > 1:24:06Among the bottles, some Bass beer.
1:24:06 > 1:24:09The Folies-Bergere was now popular with English tourists.
1:24:09 > 1:24:12What were they here for?
1:24:12 > 1:24:14What can it all mean?
1:24:14 > 1:24:17What are we being told?
1:24:25 > 1:24:31The fact that so many people have so many views about the Folies-Bergere
1:24:31 > 1:24:34is proof of the painting's potency.
1:24:34 > 1:24:38This is one of the greatest masterpieces in London.
1:24:38 > 1:24:45It never fails to set the emotions whirling and the mind ticking.
1:24:46 > 1:24:51My own view is that it's a simpler painting than we usually admit.
1:24:51 > 1:24:59Manet is showing us his tender side again, that remarkable empathy he had with modern women.
1:25:00 > 1:25:07The shifted reflection has become the barmaid's outer reality, the world out here.
1:25:07 > 1:25:12She, meanwhile, stands and dreams in her inner reality,
1:25:12 > 1:25:15cut off from us in a world of her own.
1:25:17 > 1:25:23Suzon is another of his Suzannes, a female victim of the male gaze,
1:25:23 > 1:25:25a casualty of the city.
1:25:25 > 1:25:31And art historians can twist themselves into as many compositional knots as they want,
1:25:31 > 1:25:38but they can't change the fact that this is a painting about a girl lost in her own thoughts.
1:25:38 > 1:25:45Sad, exposed, vulnerable, and therefore, so very modern.
1:25:50 > 1:25:54The Folies-Bergere was to be Manet's final masterpiece.
1:25:54 > 1:25:58He had saved his greatest fireworks till last.
1:25:59 > 1:26:04The illness had now gotten so fierce that he could no longer stand up to paint.
1:26:04 > 1:26:06The curtain was falling.
1:26:06 > 1:26:08The play was done.
1:26:12 > 1:26:16By the winter of 1882, he could no longer move.
1:26:16 > 1:26:21His leg had swollen up into a giant, black mess.
1:26:21 > 1:26:28Gangrene had set in, and when the doctors touched his toes, his nails fell off.
1:26:28 > 1:26:32The only hope left was amputation.
1:26:32 > 1:26:35So they cut his leg off just below the knee.
1:26:35 > 1:26:38But it was too late, and it was clear
1:26:38 > 1:26:41he only had days to live.
1:26:46 > 1:26:50Manet wrote a hasty will, leaving everything to Suzanne,
1:26:50 > 1:26:52and adding the firm instruction
1:26:52 > 1:26:58that on her death, Leon was to inherit his estate.
1:26:58 > 1:27:01It's the kind of thing you do for a son, isn't it?
1:27:01 > 1:27:08And although we'll never know for sure if Leon was fathered by Manet, or by Manet's father,
1:27:08 > 1:27:11or by someone else entirely, in the end,
1:27:11 > 1:27:15this relationship between a secretive painter
1:27:15 > 1:27:23and the young man he painted so often is surely a paternal one.
1:27:26 > 1:27:29At least, that's what I thought yesterday.
1:27:29 > 1:27:31Today, I'm not so sure.
1:27:31 > 1:27:36And tomorrow, I'll go back to thinking it's the father again.
1:27:36 > 1:27:38That's Manet for you.
1:27:38 > 1:27:40Slippery as an eel.
1:27:42 > 1:27:46As for his position as an artist, I can't think of any painter
1:27:46 > 1:27:50who was further ahead of his own times than Manet.
1:27:50 > 1:27:53Did he invent modern art?
1:27:53 > 1:27:57No, of course not. One man could never do that.
1:27:57 > 1:28:03Did he punch a hole in the wall, though, through which modernity could pour?
1:28:03 > 1:28:05Oh, yes, he did that all right.
1:28:11 > 1:28:15The end came quietly, in the middle of the evening.
1:28:15 > 1:28:20He wasn't religious, so he waved away the Archbishop of Paris,
1:28:20 > 1:28:23who waited until Manet was comatose
1:28:23 > 1:28:28before going against his wishes and administering the last rites.
1:28:30 > 1:28:38He died at seven o'clock on April 30th, 1883, aged just 51.
1:28:38 > 1:28:41He was buried here at Passy Cemetery,
1:28:41 > 1:28:44near Berthe Morisot's house.
1:28:44 > 1:28:50His coffin was carried proudly by Claude Monet and Emile Zola.
1:28:50 > 1:28:55Degas, who was too old to help, walked behind them and could be heard to mutter,
1:28:55 > 1:29:00"Il etait plus grand que nous le croyons."
1:29:00 > 1:29:04"He was greater than we thought."
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