The magic about lunch on the grass

With these tablecloths, on the floor, it’s a moment in the middle of nature. Lunch on the Grass is a fashionable image that invaded painting at the end of the 19th century. It was also a new popular pastime that emerged at the time. But above all a controversial whole picture.

Young Edward Manet paints a disturbing scene. Lunch on the grass turns us into a voyeur, with the naked woman in the middle looking us straight in the eye. We have the situation out of control. The painting is full of sexual overtones […] The message is very vague., analyzes Sylvie Patri, director of preservation and collections at the Musée d’Orsay. This is what fascinates Manet’s contemporaries, with all his copy, such as that of Picasso who was fascinated by the famous painting a century later. It comes in 26 different versions. Jean Renoir will later make a film about it.