If the picnic Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ["Luncheon on the grass"] was a scandal, Olympia was a full-blown riot. Manet painted a reclining nude, but she wasn't waiting for a lover and she wasn't ashamed of her job. She was a high-end prostitute depicted staring at the viewer with a look that says she knows exactly what you’re thinking. The critics called her a female gorilla. They hated her pale skin and her direct gaze, but they couldn't stop looking at her.
The painting is full of symbols that the people of Paris understood perfectly. The black cat with the arched back and the bouquet of flowers from an admirer were clear signs of her profession. Manet wasn't trying to moralize nor was he trying to judge her. He was just recording the reality of the sex trade in Paris, with a cold and brilliant technique.
The style is flat and the outlines are bold. It looks more like a Japanese print than a traditional oil painting. It was a total rejection of the soft and glowing skin tones the Academy loved. Manet was a survivor in the art world and he knew that this painting would haunt people and it certainly did. It changed the way we think about the female nude forever.
Bibliography
Clark, T.J. The Painting of Modern Life. Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers. Knopf 1984.
Bernheimer, Charles. Figures of Ill Repute. Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century France. Harvard University Press 1989.
Musée d'Orsay. Edouard Manet, Olympia. Online Collection 2024.