Thoroughly modern Manet

School project at the Musee D'Orsay.

Seeing "Le Dejenuer Sur L'Herbe" in 1863, President Napoleon III declared it "an offense against decency." Today, if the president of my country went on Twitter to denounce a painting it would prove a gold mine of publicity. T-shirt and meme farms would work around the clock to meet demand. Unrelated fragments from the news cycle would be folded into the effort. A composite of Manet and Tom Petty, wielding a 40-inch paintbrush like a guitar ― on a stage outside the Mandalay Bay, no less ―would make the rounds. Hashtag: "WontBackDown."

Edouard Manet's "Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe." The museum attendant, seated, seemed to genuinely appreciate this Chinese guide's animated description of the painting.

The compressed depth of field was a clue that something was up. French art would never be the same.

When Manet's "Olympia" was exhibited at the 1865 Salon, so many physical threats were received that the painting was hung in the last gallery high above a doorway. Visitors complained they couldn't tell what it represented: Could be a nude, could be a pile of laundry.

Scandaleux! Manet's "Olympia" was met with a chorus of public disapproval in 1865.

For every birth of a child there is the death of a grandparent. What Manet did for French art was to hasten the demise of the Salon's muddy palette ― "stews and gravies," he called it ― and brighten the color range, introducing simple outlines while de-emphasizing the single-point perspective artists had been honing for 400 years. (The depth of field in "Dejeuner" is screwy. The bather is supposed to be in the background; why does she seem so close to us?)  The American literary critic Harold Bloom might say Manet was gripped by the Oedipal anxiety all artists share ― seeking to figuratively kill his predecessor(s) to establish his own influence and authority.

I don't know about all that. But my sense is that Manet did not have patience for the typical art consumer of the mid-19th century. Narrative subject matter didn't seem to interest him. Soothing landscapes weren't his thing. Nor were, as they say in manufacturing, "fit and finish."

Berthe Morisot, as painted by Manet in 1872, would become a leading figure in the Impressionist movement.

Nina de Callias was Manet's "La Dame Aux Eventails" ("Lady With Fans"), part of his "women on sofas" series.

It is impossible to spend a morning with these dead painters, almost all of whom had no idea where they fit on the scale of art achievement, without wondering about one's own legacy, however humble. Manet cannot have known that he kicked down the door to the temple and allowed the Impressionist vandals to waltz right in.

Edouard Manet died at 51. Tertiary syphilis is a hell of a thing. A wheelchair for the ataxia, then a leg goes gangrenous, followed by amputation and ... poof. As monumental as Manet's influence was, people don't talk about him much anymore. Today's blockbuster exhibitions pass him by in favor of Picasso and Matisse and Cezanne. So I thought I'd spend a few moments to tip my cap. Everyone is good at something and deserves as much. Ideally, you'd like to find out what that something is while they are still alive and pay your respects face to face, but we're stupid that way.

One has to pay the bills, and Manet found his still lifes did the trick. They made up about 20 percent of his output.