All language subtitles for Great Art Series 2 4of5 Edouard Manet 1080p ITV

Welcome to Great Art. For the past
few years, we've been filming

the biggest exhibitions in the world

about some of the greatest artists
and art in history.

Not only do we record
these landmark shows,

but we also secure privileged access
behind the scenes

of the galleries
and museums concerned.

We then use the exhibition
as a springboard

to take a broader look.

In this film we focus
on the first-ever exhibition

devoted to the portraits
of the pre-eminent

19th century French painter
and pioneering impressionist

Edouard Manet.

Called Manet: Portraying Life,

it was held here at the Royal Academy
of Arts in London.

On occasion, the Impressionist
painters we know so well -

Renoir, Monet, Degas,
Pissarro and so on -

suffer a little from being
all grouped together

as if they were an interchangeable
all-painting mass.

The truth is that they were all very
different personalities and very
different painters.

But one of the things they did share
was an enormous respect

for the creativity and innovation
of Edouard Manet,

a painter now considered by many
to be the father of modern art.

This compelling show held at the
Royal Academy illustrated why

and allowed us
to look afresh at this great artist.

We'll be exploring
all aspects of the exhibition,

combining an analysis and discussion
with specially-invited guests,

along with an exclusive
behind-the-scenes look

at how the exhibition came together.

We'll also be exploring Manet's life

and looking at how he himself
viewed his work.

Manet is, in many ways,
misunderstood.

Frequently labelled an Impressionist,

he never considered himself
part of the group.

He was first and foremost
a painter of the modern world,

of the rapid-evolving city
of 19th-century Paris

and the people he knew in it.

His family, his friends
and acquaintances.

What this exhibition celebrates
is how Manet managed

to transform the portrait
into a means of delving deeper

into the world in which he lived.

With work spanning his entire career,
Manet: Portraying Life

is the first-ever exhibition devoted
to the portraiture of Edouard Manet.

The exhibition is a collaboration
between the Royal Academy

of Arts in London and the Toledo
Museum of Art in Ohio,

and was five years in the making.

It consists of more than 50 paintings

arranged over a series
of themed rooms...

..and sets out to establish the ways
in which Manet combined the portrait

with images that depicted
the modern world,

translating his sitters into actors
in scenes from contemporary life.

I have no doubt in my mind

that Manet is one of THE great
artists of the Western tradition...

..both as a maker of images

and as a practitioner -

the actual making of the art -

and also, I think,
as a radical thinker.

He really goes back
and rethinks and questions

what his art can do
and what it can contribute.

He was a genius.

And I don't use that word loosely.
He certainly had the self-confidence

and the nerve to proceed

in the face of great criticism.

He didn't have to earn money
making painting,

he was from a family that had means,

but he had, as Kandinsky would say,

the inner compulsion to create.

Edouard Manet is one of THE most

enigmatic figures
in the history of art.

We may think we know him -
a painter of radical images,

of nudes that shocked his world,
as the father of Impressionism,

the first emphatically modern artist
-

but the reality
is far more complicated.

What is not in doubt is that Manet

was one of the greatest artists
that ever lived,

someone who pushed the boundaries
of what art could do.

What he set out to do -

in terms of a radical rethinking
about technique,

a blurring of the genres,

the pursuit of new,

in some ways,
ways of depicting subject matter -

made him very much
the father of modern art.

Now, I'm joined by the co-curator
of the exhibition

MaryAnne Stevens
from the Royal Academy.

Standing in front of a late
self-portrait by the man himself.

MaryAnne, why is Manet
a modern artist?

What makes him the father
of modern art, do you think?

I think when you're looking
at even something like this,

you find yourself thinking,

'He started with no preconception.'

He himself said that he started
every single subject

as if he had never seen
that particular subject before.

And he goes absolutely
back to square one

and builds up the painting
according to the demands

of the relationship between him,
the subject and the way

the paint goes on the surface
of the canvas.

Now, from my perspective,

that's an incredibly risky
approach to take.

But what's fascinating
is that the risk is there

and you feel with each painting,
he pushes it to the limit,

but he doesn't quite
fall off the precipice.

Something just holds it back.

Which brings us to the thesis of the
show - Manet and portraiture.

You're saying he treats portraiture
in a totally different way.

He blurs distinction
between portraiture

and what is broadly
called genre painting.

Yes. I mean, the real argument
of the show is, first of all,

it started with the notion
that nobody had done

an exhibition about
Manet as a portraitist

and yet he painted portraits
from his very early years,

right the way through to the point
at which he dies in early 1883.

If he's going to paint
the contemporary world,

modernity,

he has to paint people who are real
in it, in his paintings.

He just can't conjure up anybody who
might have walked off the street.

He needs to know who they are.

So, he uses the people
that he's painted in portraits -

his family, his friends,
his models on a regular basis -

and he transposes them and turns
them

into actors in his scenes
of contemporary life.

So, for him, portraiture

is only occasionally
in and of itself interesting.

In a way, it opens the gate

to a different way
of looking and seeing.

It forces him to do things
he wouldn't otherwise do.

It forces him to do things
that he wouldn't otherwise do

and I think it also forces him,
but he accepts it very willingly,

to absolutely rethink
what is meant by portraiture.

And that, again, is him
pushing the boundaries

as he does in so much else
in his art.

All of which will reveal itself
throughout that exhibition.

Thank you very much.
We're now going to take a look

behind the scenes and find out more

about how the exhibition
itself came together.

When curating an exhibition
which involves, of course,

the argument of the exhibition
being determined,

the selection of works
to support that argument

on the walls of the exhibition
galleries being determined,

the next stage has to be,

'How is it going to work
within the spaces themselves?'

There's a bit of virgin territory
there.

Given that we work here
at the Royal Academy

with fixed galleries -

these were built
in the mid-19th century -

we really have to work with them
rather than against them.

If you've got the...
(INDISTINCT SPEECH)

'So you think very carefully
in terms of chapters.'

Each chapter being determined by the
spaces, each gallery space.

And it's at that stage that you
enter

into a conversation with the
designer.

Basically laying out the argument
of the exhibition,

laying out why you've selected
the works that you have

for each of the spaces,
and then beginning

the process of 'Will they fit?
How will they hang on the walls?

What colour you will paint the
walls.

How you will orchestrate
the passage of the visitor

from the beginning of the exhibition
to the end of the exhibition.'

On 23rd January 1832,

Edouard Manet was born
in the heart of Paris,

here in his parent's comfortable
second-floor apartment.

His family was upper-middle class.
Wealthy and well connected.

Manet's father
was a senior civil servant

in the Ministry of Justice
and rose to become a judge.

Manet's mother was the daughter
of a diplomat.

The young Manet struggled at school
and was easily distracted.

An uncle, seeing that Edouard
was interested in art,

tried to help matters
by paying for drawing lessons

and taking him to the art galleries
in the Louvre.

By his mid-teens,
Manet had firmly declared

his desire to become an artist.

But his father wanted him
to follow in his legal footsteps,

something Edouard
stubbornly resisted.

So, instead, a third option
was proposed -

he could try for a career
in the French Navy.

Manet's going to sea

was a kind of compromise
on the part of the family.

It was obvious that he wasn't
going to study law.

And they hoped
that he would go into the navy,

but he failed the entrance exam.

So there was a kind of way
of getting into the navy

by either going
into the merchant navy

or, as it turns out,
sailing south of the equator.

So he got a position as a sailor
on a boat that was going to Rio.

And he was very seasick at first
and then very, very, very bored.

So it wasn't a passion.
He loved the sea,

but it was more about his family
forcing a kind of gap year on him,

so that he could decide
what he was going to do.

Shortly after his return from sea,
in June 1849,

when he was still only 17 years old,

Manet met the woman
who was to become his wife.

Suzanne Leenhoff was a 19-year-old
Dutch piano tutor

employed by the Manet household.

And, at some point
in the winter of 1849,

Edouard and Suzanne
began a relationship.

And back in the first gallery
of the exhibition,

in a room exploring portraits
of Manet's family,

is Suzanne Leenhoff -
shown here at the piano in 1868.

Manet and Suzanne's relationship
was a complicated one.

Two years after they met,
she bore a son

that she called Leon Edouard.

And many people subsequently
believed that that was Manet's son.

Manet and Suzanne
did eventually marry,

but some 14 years
after they'd first met

and, significantly,
after the death of Manet's father,

who some believed
was actually Leon's father.

Now, amidst all this confusion
and complexity,

one important thing emerges
as far as Manet's art's concerned.

Namely, that Leon
was an important early model

featuring in 17 paintings by Manet.

And it's an image of Leon
that dominates

the first major work that we're going
to look at - the Luncheon.

Painted in 1868, the Luncheon
is one of Manet's greatest,

yet most enigmatic works.

It's an image dominated
by the figure of Leon.

Though he stands centre-stage,
his position at the edge

of a lunch table suggests
his imminent departure,

that his mind is elsewhere,
reinforced by his distant gaze

as he stares blankly out
beyond the viewer.

Around him are a series
of contrived still lives,

a sword and armour,
oysters and a lemon on the table.

For a time, Claude Monet
sat as the model

for the bearded figure at the table

but, in the end,
another artist took up the job.

Auguste Rousselin,
a neighbour of the Manet's

in Boulogne, where they spent
the summer,

and where this painting
is sought to be located.

And while the female figure
in the background

remains unidentified,
the strange disengaged poses

of all three figures make any kind
of narrative reading of the picture

very hard to make.

By 1849, Manet's father
had finally allowed him

to pursue an artistic career.

Manet then began six years of study

in the studio of the painter
Thomas Couture.

Manet's period in Couture's studio
was very much that of a student.

It was no longer the kind
of apprenticeship system

that had prevailed in, say,
Renaissance times.

And it was definitely about learning
to draw from the model,

learning to paint
with the supervision of the teacher.

It was much more like an art school
today would be.

Though a traditionalist
in some respects,

Couture was an interesting mentor

for he had certain
contemporary concerns.

Couture's acknowledged masterpiece
was a large-scale history painting

called The Romans of the Decadence,

in which the debauched
Roman revellers represented

what Couture considered to be
the moral decline in his own day.

It's a big history painting,

but it's about the morals
of the period.

And Manet wants
to be a history painter.

He wants to express, erm,
I mean, the issues of the day.

He wants to turn history painting
into modernity.

Couture encouraged his pupils to find
their own artistic language

rather than slavishly follow
current conventions.

And he stressed the need
for spontaneity

and the rapidly-rendered sketch.

But outside Couture's studio,
another artist was challenging

the conventions of French painting
to an even greater degree.

In 1850, the realist painter
Gustave Courbet

exhibited this monumental work,
Burial At Ornans, at the Paris Salon.

The painting was a manifesto
for a new kind of art,

Realism, a radical movement
that sought to replace

romanticised images from the past
with depictions of ordinary people,

contemporary figures in scenes
from everyday life.

Accordingly, the Salon
was scandalised

and Courbet's position as the leading
avant-garde artist in Paris was
assured.

It was against this backdrop
that Manet emerged.

Without doubt, Manet drew
on the lessons of realism.

But, at the same time, he admired
much of the art of the old masters,

including Dutch art
of the 17th century.

But by far his greatest passion
was for the art of Spain.

For Manet, certain Spanish painting
offered an alternative

to the idealised,
classically-inspired art of Italy.

And the artist he revered
above all others

was Diego Velazquez, who he called
the greatest artist ever.

There are a number of examples
in the exhibition

which show the influence
of Spanish art on Manet.

Works such as the Street Singer,
showing a fashionably-attired woman

emerging from a cafe, clutching
a guitar and eating fruit

owe something to the art of Spain,
both in subject and style.

But it's this work, The Tragic Actor,

that most pointedly
references Spanish painting.

Not least a specific work
by Velazquez himself.

Joining me is the Spanish expert
and chief curator

of Dulwich Picture Gallery,
Dr Xavier Bray.

Now, this is a theatrical portrait
in every sense, isn't it?

It shows the great French
tragic actor Rouviere.

He's playing the role of Hamlet.

He dies, I think,
before it's completed

and Manet has to use
other friends as models.

One for the legs, I think,
one for the main body.

But that's not what really stands out
about his picture.

No. It's a clear homage to Velazquez
and everybody who saw it,

even before it was exhibited
in 1867 at the Salon,

everybody said this owes everything
to Pablo de Valladolid,

one of the great portraits
of a court jester by Velazquez,

which Manet would have seen
at the Prado in 1865.

In the summer of 1865, he finally
makes his journey to Madrid.

And, of course, is completely
ebloui, completely amazed by
Velazquez.

And this is, on his return,
the homage that he paints.

And the way you really
pick it up straightaway

is this neutral backdrop.
Velazquez was just totally

unabashed about using
neutral backdrops

to bring the figure forward.

And this is the kind of modernity
that Manet really wanted.

He wanted to have that confirmation
that Velazquez was the key

to what he was gonna be doing
back in Paris.

Manet was a Parisian
through and through.

But during his lifetime,
Paris underwent

a radical transformation.

Manet embraced change.
He lived all his life in and around

the new suburbs
in the northwest of the city.

And he was a great enthusiast
for the expanding railways,

one of which snaked into the Gare
Saint-Lazare close to his home.

MAN: 'One day coming back from
Versailles,

I got up on the footplate
of a locomotive,

alongside the engine driver
and fireman.

It was a wonderful sight.

Theirs is a dog's life,
but it's those men

who are the heroes of today.'

Manet's world was essentially
that of the boulevard,

the salon and the cafe.

But this vision of Paris,
so familiar to us today,

emerged almost entirely
through the 19th century -

from a city that had evolved
down the ages,

with a warren of medieval streets
at it's heart,

to the city of vast,
straight, spacious boulevards.

These iconic thoroughfares
are the product

of a remarkable period
of urban planning

that took place through the middle
of the 19th century

under the direction
of Georges-Eugene Haussmann.

Haussmann had been commanded
by the emperor, Napoleon III,

to regularise the city
at huge expense.

MAN: 'Manet and I strolled together
through the midst of demolitions

intersected by gaping holes

where the ground
had already been levelled.

House-breakers stood out.

White against a wall less white,

which was collapsing
under their blows,

covering them in a cloud of dust.

For a long time, Manet remained
absorbed in admiration of this
scene.

I think that the development of
Paris in the second half

of the 19th century under Napoleon
III

and Haussmann was extremely
important for Manet.

What he saw was whole districts
being ripped down

and new buildings being put up,
new boulevards being created.

Really the centre of modern Paris,
as we know it today, being created

and he was fascinated by that.

Manet's enthusiasm was matched
by that of his friend,

the poet Charles Baudelaire.

From 1858, the two
became close companions,

meeting most days to stroll through
the boulevards and parks of the city.

They held common ideas
about art and poetry

and Baudelaire wrote an influential
essay entitled The Painter Of Modern
Life.

In it he described an artist
who mixed with the crowd,

but who remained an impartial
observer of behaviour and fashion.

A figure he called the flaneur -
the stroller, the ambler.

MAN: 'For the flaneur, it is an
endless source of pleasure

to enrol in the multitude,
in the ebb and flow...

and to observe the thousands
of floating existences

which drift about the underworld
of a great city.'

Such an observer was Manet.

One of Manet's most strikingly
original works -

Music In The Tuileries Gardens -
is a complex multi-figured portrait

and a direct statement by Manet
about contemporary life.

Within it, we see portraits
of Manet's family,
friends and acquaintances,

from his brother Eugene Manet
to the writer Zacharie Astruc.

And where some portraits are rendered
with a degree of precision,

others, including that of Baudelaire,
are given only a cursory treatment.

The painting is also a self-portrait,

as Manet himself is pictured
at the far left,

just on the edge of the canvas.

But beyond being a literal likeness
of Manet and his circle,

this is a kind of cultural
self-portrait

and, above all, an affirmation
of Baudelaire's ideas of modernity,

of the heroism of the transient
beauty of the modern life

and the important role of the flaneur

in interpreting and representing
that beauty.

Joining me in front of Music
in the Tuileries Gardens

is the writer and film maker
Iain Sinclair, who's written

extensively about the experience
of the modern city.

Iain, when you look at this painting,
does it scream modern Paris to you?

It shouts about modernity,

it shouts about the contact
with Baudelaire,

who is looking at cities in a new
way and giving the germs of ideas

that will play on for poets
for generations.

It's difficult to work out
what exactly is happening.

We know there's a concert being
given, but there's no sign of the
orchestra.

There's no real sense
of where they are, no focal point.

I think its enigmatic
and almost surreal quality

is a germ of modernity, certainly.

And the action is not in the frame.

The music is elsewhere.
What are these people doing here?

It's like this hugely clotted
gathering in a strange space.

They are here because they have
moral or social importance.

They're all placed
and positioned in there

as if they represented
virtues in some way

and as if the music was off-screen
and something that was haunting them

but which we, as a reader, would
have to bring ourselves to the
action.

Interesting that...

this has been described as a kind
of cultural self-portrait by Manet.

And he locates himself in the picture
but only on the extreme left.

So he's in the picture, but he's
detached to a certain extent.

Well, it's the gaze, the Manet gaze.

He's looking at us
more than at the picture.

But what you see in it
is almost a precursor

of the artist of the moment in that
it's a wonderful example of
self-promotion.

He's got all the possible critics
who could write about him
into the picture.

All the dignitaries, all the social
figures, all the patrons.

He's lined them all up and squeezed
them into this one picture.

Within a year of painting
Music In The Tuileries Gardens,

Manet's artistic radicalism
would provoke an outcry

at the very heart of the French
artistic establishment,
the Paris Salon.

Success for the many painters
in France

was almost totally dependent
on being accepted by the Paris Salon,

the annual artistic showcase
that had been established

more than a century earlier
at the Louvre Palace.

A jury recruited from members
of Paris' artistic elite

would select the paintings
for exhibition,

which were then hung
floor-to-ceiling.

It was enormous.
There were thousands of paintings

and pieces of sculpture on view.

And they were arranged in a way

which is almost unbelievable
to us today.

You would put paintings together

in whatever configuration
you could fit them.

And also, the rooms
were organised alphabetically.

So this wasn't an ideal way
of displaying paintings,

but it was the space in which
to make your name.

And for Manet, it remained
THE most important place

in which to display his paintings.

This is The Birth of Venus
by Alexandre Cabanel.

It was exhibited in 1863
and proves that in that year,

the Salon jury were not afraid
of nudity.

Indeed, the critics warmly
praised the painting

and its classical style.

But this painting -
well, this was too much.

It was Manet's 1863 submission.

A painting called
The Luncheon On The Grass

or Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe.

This is an image of a nude female
relaxing after lunch

with two men dressed in the clothes
of contemporary dandies.

It was easily interpreted
as a naked prostitute

sitting in a city park
with two young students.

The stark contemporary nature
of Manet's scene

offended the Salon jury

and the painting, to Manet's
intense disappointment, was rejected.

In 1863, Manet wasn't alone
in being rejected by the Salon jury.

2,200 were accepted,
but 2,800 were rejected.

This unprecedented number of rejects
led to a public outcry

and calls for an alternative
exhibition to be set up.

And so, a Salon des Refuses
was organised,

where 1,500 of the rejected paintings
were put on display.

It was a sensation
with thousands visiting every day.

Among them was a new phenomenon
in the art world, the art critic.

And the painting the new critics
tore into above all

was Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe.

MAN: 'Manet will show talent

once he learns drawing
and perspective,

and taste once he stops
choosing subjects

for the sake of scandal.'

MAN: 'I fail to see what could
have induced

such a distinguished
and intelligent artist

to adopt such an absurd
composition.'

I'm now joined by Larry Nichols,
the co-curator of the exhibition,

who is from the Toledo Museum of Art
in Toledo, Ohio

and who has a special relationship
with this painting

which is of Manet's great friend,
Antonin Proust, the politician,

who's also trained
as an artist, I think.

Larry, what is the significance
for you of this work?

This picture was exhibited
in the Salon in 1880

and some 44 years later,
on the open market in New York,

the founder of the Toledo
Museum of Art,

Edward Drummond Libbey,
purchases this painting,

leaves it to the museum
at his death in 1925

and it goes on view January 26.

And it's been part of our collection
and one of the highlights

of our museum's holdings
and is to this moment.

I've been fortunate
to work in service,

curate at that museum
for some two decades now

and I said, 'Someday,
I might wanna participate

in this painting being in an exhibit
on his portraiture.'

And the way the profession works,
I heard that London,

my colleague and friend,
MaryAnne Stevens,

was thinking of doing something
with Manet as well.

And we got together, we said,
'Let's do Manet,

let's do Manet's portraiture.'

And this a linchpin then and the
genesis of this project.

Many people, now having made
part of this journey with us
through this exhibition,

will look at this and think,
in relative terms,

we're on safer ground, there's an
element of the conventional.

Oh, sure. Mm-hm. But do you think
there's a radical underpinning

or is this Manet playing
a more conventional game?

The composition is, er...

In the terms you've just set up,
the composition is traditional.

I was in the National Gallery
down the street not many days ago

looking at Titian portraits.

And you can find gloves
just like that,

and the stance and the arm akimbo.

This intelligent artist
knew his art history.

Composition, technique - it's
radical and it's modern.

So, I'm giving you two answers
there.

He is applying paint to canvas
in ways that is new for the time.

The beard, the light on it,
the boutonniere.

He's applying paint... There were
individuals who thought it looked...

critics who thought it was
unfinished.

I mean, this is as finished
as he ever gets.

One of the great misconceptions
about Manet was that
he was an Impressionist.

But he never considered himself
part of the group.

In fact, despite his friendship
with the young artists

who were dubbed Impressionists,

he was at pains to remain separate,
to stand apart.

By the late 1860s,
Manet was well established

as the most celebrated
avant-garde artist in Paris.

Around him gathered
a group of young artists,

including Degas, Monet and Renoir.

They met in cafes,
mostly in those new suburbs

to the northwest of the city.

Ideas about art were argued,
exchanged and advanced.

This was the crucible
of the art movement

that came to be called Impressionism.

In 1874, these and other artists
decided to hold their own exhibition,

here at the studio
of the photographer Nadar.

One painting in the exhibition
was this by Claude Monet.

It was called Impression, Sunrise.

A critic hated it and mocked
this new style of Impressionism.

Manet's name was associated
with the movement,

but he never agreed
to exhibit with them.

Manet is not an Impressionist
for a whole variety of reasons,

although people tend to think of him
very much as being an Impressionist.

First of all, to be an Impressionist

really one had to have exhibited
with the Impressionist group.

They had eight group shows
between 1874 and 1886.

And Manet was invited
on several occasions

to join with the group
and he refused on every occasion.

But beyond his reluctance to exhibit,

Manet's approach to painting differed
fundamentally from that of the
Impressionists.

Working outdoors, en plein air, the
Impressionists set out to capture

the fleeting effects of light on
their subjects through an innovative
approach

to brushwork and colour.

I think he was very intrigued
by a looser technique,

a lighter palette, the possibility
of working out of doors.

He didn't enjoy it terribly,
but he gave it a try.

But it's very interesting,
he never lost...

two things.
One was the sense of form.

He never breaks up his form in the
way that the Impressionists do,

where they allow light to fracture
the form and disperse it.

He holds on to the importance
of form but, at the same time,

constantly plays
with this two-dimensionality,

which the Impressionists
only really get to

in the 1880s, after Manet's death.

Painted in 1873, The Railway
is one of Manet's great works.

It's an encapsulation of his ability
to fuse the portrait, the genre seen,

and a depiction of modern life.

The subject of the painting's title
barely appears in the frame,

and yet the modernity
of the railway below,

which had just opened
five years before,

and the Pont de l'Europe
just visible in the background,

emphatically declare it as a scene
of contemporary life.

And then, staring out
almost confronting the viewer,

is a young woman,
the model Victorine Meurent

dressed in the latest
autumn fashions.

She's accompanied
by an anonymous little girl

whose focus is on the noise and steam
of the locomotives below.

The two occupy a compressed space

between the picture plane
and the iron bars of the railings,

that beat a rhythm
across the composition.

The painting was accepted
at the Salon.

But, like so many of Manet's
previous works,

The Railway frustrated critics,
one of whom complained,

'Is this a double portrait
or a subject picture?'

And in many ways,
that was the point for Manet.

It was both and neither.

I'm joined in front of The Railway
by the actor,

director and Manet enthusiast
Fiona Shaw.

Fiona, this again,
I suppose superficially,

is a very straightforward picture.
But it is enigmatic, too.

Do you make sense of it easily?
Well, looking at it now, I...

it does have a hint of sort of
what became later a sentimental

painting, as you think,
of a lady and a child and...

I suppose what is striking
about the painting is that it's set

in an urban context
and he was definitely trying

to get away from the countryside.

I suppose it's very daring
to put a rather nice, innocent lady

and the little girl,
but against this new Paris

that's building up behind.
I think that's probably
what the point of itis.

Picking up on the image of innocence
- cos you're right,

it's a girl in a fashionable,
pretty frock,

there's a woman
in very fashionable attire

with a dog on her lap, reading.
But in the flesh,

isn't there something quite
confrontational about her face?

Don't you feel you've invaded a space
that you

might not have done
or shouldn't have done?

It's interesting you say that
because I think in general, where he
uses this gaze of a female

looking straight
at the camera as it were,

is he trying to say it's him
looking through these women's eyes?

It's a very strange way
of painting something.

It's not a painting of the woman
and the child, is it?

It's somehow a painting
in which the woman and the child,

or the woman, is in dialogue with
us.

So it's not of something,
it's about something.

And I suppose in this case,
it's about,

yes, maybe her bewilderment
at being in a new country

that's becoming new, that France
is changing under her feet.

She seems such a classical
bourgeois lady.

She so... You know, she so isn't.

Yes, actually, as I look at it now,
she's almost questioning.

There's something about
the alienating nature

of modern life or of the city. Yes.

Some of Manet's visions
have this kind of, you know,

people in the Tuileries
Gardens together. Yes.

But a lot of the time
people are together but isolated.

This is very loudly that, I think.

It is, and she's very...
It's very vintage Manet
in that you know it's Manet.

It's something to do
with the black choker.

He does define the character
as though it's in the world,

whether it's going to last long
or whether the world
is a nice world to be in.

But he's very definite about her.
She's definitely there

for all the book and the lap dog
and everything.

And there's something
very lonely about it.

By the end of the 1870s,
there was a sense that Manet's work

had been eclipsed to a certain extent
by the radical steps

taken by the Impressionists
to make a new form of painting.

But in the very last years
of his life

and already suffering the effects
of the syphilis that would kill him,

Manet created one final great work.

MAN: 'This theatre.

It is the only place
in Paris which reeks

so exquisitely of paid love
and wearied corruptions.'

In Manet's last great work,
the Bar At The Folies-Bergere,

we're confronted by a direct gaze

like few others
in the history of art.

There's a sense that perhaps he knew
it would stand as a final statement,

an encapsulation
of all that he tried to do.

The Bar At The
Folies-Bergere is a true masterpiece

and it was meant to be so
because Manet was ill.

He knew that his doctor, erm...

..didn't have the means to cure him.

And it is also a kind of farewell
to the Paris world...

..that he loved to enjoy before.

So he tried to, well,
sum up everything in one painting.

The barmaid stands in place,

a bar offering bottles of champagne,
flowers and fruit.

But with the lights and ambience
of the nightclub

visible in the mirror behind her.

Her face betrays a weary resignation,

totally at odds
with her surroundings.

And then, in an extraordinary twist,
off to the right, a mirror image,

we see the face of her customer,

the viewer, in effect, us.

Manet died, aged 51,
on 30th April 1883,

suffering from advanced syphilis,

and having failed to recover
from the amputation of his left leg

earlier in the month due to gangrene.

Among the pallbearers at his funeral
were his great friends

Antonin Proust, Emile Zola
and Claude Monet.

Edgar Degas was reported
to have said after his death,

'He was more important
than we realised'.

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