Manet's Women

Nineteenth century France was a period of rapid modernisation and expansion. Édouard Manet, the quintessential painter of modern life, was a man of his times and his paintings were powerful, often shocking, representations of modern society. In particular, Manet scandalised French society with his iconoclastic depictions of women as objects of pleasure and commerce, as products of a burgeoning capitalism and a commodity of the bourgeois male. An understanding of the historical and social co...