Everyone who comes to the Courtauld Gallery is amazed to see this painting, which is the famous painter Edouard Manet's Lunch on the Grass, which is hung high in one of the gallery's exhibition halls. It is estimated that people who see this painting will ask: "Oh, it seems that something is wrong, isn't this painting in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris?" Some sharp-eyed visitors may even question: "Is this painting originally so small?" "That's a good question! Manet's Lunch on the Grass opened the curtain of the Impressionist era and is now in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in France, measuring 208 cm × 265.5 cm. The "Lunch on the Grass" in the Collection of The Courtard Gallery is less than half the size of the original. But no matter how you look at it, this painting is Manet's Lunch on the Grass, is the Courtauld Gallery deliberately exhibiting a replica?
The "Lunch on the Grass" in the collection of the Courtauld Gallery is actually a reproduction of Manet's own creation. In 1863, Manet sent the painting to the Salon in Paris, where he was unsuccessful, but it caused a sensation in the Entire French painting scene at the "Salon of the Losers". Although the painting references the classic masterpieces of Titian Vecellio, Giorgione, Raphael and other painters, 19th-century critics and the general public still cannot understand the strange picture of a with sagging lower abdomen, thick thighs, and an unattractive beauty, and a well-dressed gentleman sitting side by side on the grass. No matter how you look at it, the nude image of the woman in this painting is not as elegant and perfect as the goddess, nor does it belong to the plump, feminine, smooth-lined female figure that Rubens and Ingres are good at painting. The nude in Manet's painting is the, not the goddess in the mythological story, but the real woman in real life. The image of and gentlemen sitting together looks very promiscuous. The two gentlemen were chatting intently, while the next to them looked at the viewer and seemed to be asking, What do you see? That defiant glance inevitably arouses displeasure in the viewer. Because of this, Manet was criticized as a "lewd painter", and at the same time, he grew into a leading figure of Impressionist painters, deeply influencing a group of young painters centered on Paris. But Manet did not like the term Impressionism very much, and calling him an Impressionist painter was indeed a bit reluctant, because most of the Impressionists, including Monet and Reno, attached great importance to outdoor light, in other words, they cared a lot about the effect of natural light on the object of painting, and Manet hardly drew a sketch outdoors. The location of this "Lunch on the Grass" is also a studio, not outdoors. Returning to the question at the beginning, why did the much-criticized copy of Lunch on the Grass hang in the Courtauld Gallery? Many painters practice drawing sketches or drafts before painting large-scale works. (The Courtauld Gallery houses more than twenty drafts that Seurat used as a practice before painting Big Bowl Island Sunday Afternoon.) Did Manet also paint this sketch before creating the masterpiece that participated in the salon exhibition?
No, Manet painted Lunch on the Grass, which is in the Musée d'Orsay, before painting the work in the Courtold Gallery. According to the results of X-ray projection, "Lunch on the Grass" in the Musée d'Orsay has countless traces of brush modifications, but this work in the Kautauld Gallery has almost no trace of modification. After painting on the large canvas, Manet painted it again on the small canvas, and it is almost impossible to find the difference between the two paintings, which proves that Manet completed this small work by comparing it to "Lunch on the Grass" on the large canvas. The reason why Manet painted another identical "Lunch on the Grass" was because his friend General Rizzoni asked him to paint it smaller, and Manet, who could not refuse his friend's request, had to paint this small version again. In short, it is a bonus to be able to enjoy this legendary masterpiece of Impressionism in the Kautauld Gallery. Hopefully, visitors who don't understand why the Courtauld Gallery is hanging a replica of Lunch on the Grass will dispel this little misunderstanding after reading this article.