Manet

édouard manet painted modern life in paris bars and parks while critics were still demanding mythology. olympia and déjeuner sur l'herbe were the great scandals of the 1860s; both are now standard art-history canon. a bar at the folies-bergère (1882) was his last major work — a barmaid stares past you while the room bends in the mirror behind her, and the spatial puzzle has been argued about for a century. manet died the following year; he was fifty-one. that final canvas is in the catalog.