File:Manet and the French impressionists- Pissarro-Claude Monet-Sisley-Renoir-Berthe Morisot-Cézanne-Guillaumin (1910) (14783416825).jpg

Identifier: manetfrenchimpre00dure (find matches)
Title: Manet and the French impressionists: Pissarro--Claude Monet--Sisley--Renoir--Berthe Morisot--Cézanne--Guillaumin
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Duret, Théodore, 1838-1927 Flitch, J. E. Crawford (John Ernest Crawford), tr
Subjects: Manet, Edouard, 1832-1883 Painting Impressionism (Art)
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott company
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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black cat iscurled up at the feet of the servant carrying the coffee-pot. Alsofor an advertisement for Champfleurys book of Cats he made abody - colour drawing and a lithograph, in which a black and awhite cat are frolicking on the roofs. The cat in the Olympia mightsurely then have been accepted as one of those whims, whichartists not infrequently indulge in. But the public was so irritatedby everything which Manet did, that it could forgive him nothing.One wonders what would have become of all those pictures, fromthe Renaissance onwards, into which artists have introduced strik-ing or fantastic details if the princes, who were in former times thesole patrons of art, had shown the same lack of intelligence as theParisians of 1865. I have never been able to reflect on the indignation aroused bythe cat in the Olympia without recalling the Coronation of Mariede Medicis. In that picture Rubens took a very different liberty.He put two large hounds in the front of the picture, against the
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THE OLYMPIA 27 high altar of the cathedral where bishops and cardinals are offici-ating. Henry IV., only just visible, is relegated to a gallery inthe background, while the two animals, as though they were ofprincipal importance, lord it in the foreground. I imagine thatthese dogs belonged to Henry himself, and that he had thempainted because he was fond of them. Although it seemed rightto a king of France to introduce dogs into a cathedral at thequeens coronation, to the Parisians, on the other hand, it seemedvery wrong to place a cat on a womans bed. The black cat ofthe Olympia soon became the laughing-stock of the town. Cari-cature seized upon it, and its arched back and long tail continuedfor some time to furnish a subject for jokes and jeers. Manets two pictures had the same sort of violent fascinationfor the visitors to the Salon that a red rag has for a bull, or amirror for larks. Everybody went to see them. There wasalways a crowd, or rather a mob, in front of them. It was ver

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