The Guitar Player

The Guitar Player exemplifies Manet’s controversial “modern” approach: a contemporary figure painted on a large canvas; a flat, two-dimensional picture plane; a sharp contrast of dark and light against a neutral background; and, no idealized sentiment so prevalent in the accepted hierarchy of historical, religious and allegorical paintings at that time.

A year after Manet painted The Guitar Player, and knowing that he would not be invited to show in the official Universal Exhibition, he mounted his own solo exhibition of 50 works that included this painting along with earlier, often-ridiculed works such as Olympia, Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, and Mlle V … in the Costume of an Espada. He had used the same model, Victorine Meurent, in all of these controversial compositions.

Fun fact: Victorine-Louise Meurent was a French painter as well as a famous model for painters. Although she is now best known as the favourite model of Édouard Manet, she was an artist in her own right who regularly exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon. In 1876, paintings of hers were selected for inclusion at the Salon's juried exhibition when Manet's work was not.

See you tomorrow!