Berthe Morisot, who died in 1895, after winning the praise of the most critical pens in all Europe.  Edouard was intended for the bar, but he threw up his studies and swore he would become a painter.  Then he was sent abroad.  He visited South America and other countries, and kept his eyes wide open, as his sea-pieces proved.  After his mother became a widow he married, in 1863, Susanne Leenhoff, of Delft, Holland.  She was one of the early admirers of Schumann in Paris and played the A minor piano concerto with orchestra there, and, it is said, with success.  She was an admirer of her husband’s genius, and during all the turmoil of his existence she was a friend and counsellor.

The young couple lived with the elder Mme. Manet in the Rue de Saint-Petersbourg, and their weekly reception became a rallying centre for not only les Jeunes, but also for such men as Gambetta, Emile Ollivier, Clemenceau, Antonin Proust, De Banville, Baudelaire, Duranty—­with whom Manet fought a duel over a trifle—­Zola, Mallarme, Abbe Hurel, Monet, and the impressionistic group.  Edouard entertained great devotion for his mother.  She saw two of her sons die, Edouard in 1883 (April 30) and Gustave in 1884. (He was an advocate and took Clemenceau’s place as municipal councillor when the latter was elected Deputy.) Mme. Manet died in 1885.  The painter was stricken with locomotor ataxia, brought on by protracted toil, in 1881.  For nearly three years he suffered, and after the amputation of a leg he succumbed.  His obsequies were almost of national significance.  His widow lived until 1906.

Manet et manebit was the motto of the artist.  He lived to paint and he painted much after his paralytic seizure.  He was a brilliant raconteur, and, as Degas said, was at one time as well known in Paris as Garibaldi, red shirt and all.  The truth is, Manet, after being forced with his back to the wall, became the active combatant in the duel with press and public.  He was unhappy if people on the boulevard did not turn to look at him.  “The most notorious painter in Paris” was a description which he finally grew to enjoy.  It may not be denied that he painted several pictures as a direct challenge to the world, but a painter of offensive pictures he never was.  The execrated Picnic, proscribed by the jury of the Salon in 1861, was shown in the Salon des Refuses (in company with works by Bracquemond, Cazin, Fantin-Latour, Harpignies, Jongkind, J.P.  Laurens, Legros, Pissarro, Vollon, Whistler—­the mildest-mannered crew of pirates that ever attempted to scuttle the bark of art), and a howl arose.  What was this shocking canvas like?  A group of people at a picnic, several nudes among them.  In vain it was pointed out to the modest Parisians (who at the time revelled in the Odalisque of Ingres, in Cabanel, Gerome, Bouguereau, and other delineators of the chaste) that in the Louvre the Concert of Giorgione depicted just such a scene; but the mixture of dressed and undressed was appalling, and Manet became a man marked for vengeance.  Perhaps the exceeding brilliancy of his paint and his unconventional manner of putting it on his canvas had as much to do with the obloquy as his theme.  And then he would paint the life around him instead of producing pastiches of old masters or sickly evocations of an unreal past.