Manet et Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe

Taking advantage of the fact that Musée d'Orsay is currently hosting a fabulous retrospective of Manet's work, "Manet : Inventeur du Moderne", we spent the day discovering some of this painter's most famous works.

The first painting we took a close look at was "Déjeuner sur l'herbe" :



We learned how many other artists were inspired by this painting and then did their own versions of it :


Claude Monet, in 1865-1866


Pablo Picassso, in 1961



Alain Jacquet, in 1964


Jean-Vincent Sénac even created a coloring book with a creative, transformative take on Manet's painting :

The first page


Second page


Final page


We added our colors to Sénac's rendition :






Next, we learned the term "anachronism" and saw some artistic versions of it :








Using Manet's "Déjeuner sur l'herbe" as a base, we tried our hand at an anachronistic collage version :











Then, for fun, we struck a pose and became actors in Manet's luncheon scene :












And then we had our own Luncheon on the Grass...





Afterwards, we drew sketches on wax paper




















And "painted" with colored wax shavings for an ephemeral work











At last, we made souvenir books of our week together, gluing in images of our favorite works of art from the various artists we "met" each day.