Figure 11.2 Music in the Tuileries, 1862, by Édouard Manet, oil on canvas, 76 × 118 cm, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin and the National Gallery, London. This ‘snapshot’ of modern life and the figures cut off on the edge of the canvas show the influence of the new art of photography.
The booming economy allowed for a more convenient leisurely lifestyle and newly developed open spaces encouraged the bourgeois to flaunt their new wealth (Fig. 11.1).
Musical concerts took place regularly in the gardens of the Tuileries Palace, where fashionable people liked to meet and be seen. Music in the Tuileries by Édouard Manet shows this (Fig. 11.2). He included his brother, Eugène, in the centre and his own portrait on the extreme left.
Find out how Manet has suggested the theme of music rather than showing the actual activity in Music in the Tuileries.
Why do you think the artist chose to depict himself as well as his brother in this painting?
Art The art market was dominated by collectors from the new middle class. Insecure and fearful, they looked on anything radical with suspicion and that included new art. They depended on ‘experts’ in the Academy.
The Academy favoured ‘safe’ Classical subjects. Jean-August-Dominique Ingres (Fig. 11.3) was a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts and he
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Figure 11.3 The Valpinçon Bather, 1808, by Jean- Auguste-Dominique Ingres, oil on canvas, 146 × 98 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
