Battle of USS Kearsarge and CSS Alabama Manet

Battle of the USS Kearsarge and CSS Alabama by Edouard Manet, oil on canvas 1864, is a painting of a naval battle during the American Civil War with the Confederate vessel Alabama sinking by the stern while billowing dark smoke on choppy grey seas under an overcast, cloudy grey sky. The Union warship Kearsarge is obscured in the distance behind clouds of smoke, while in the foreground a small skiff and crew sail into the scene of the historic battle. This American battle of 1864 took place in waters off the coast of France and was a sensation in the news--Manet quickly produced the painting for exhibition in an innovative twist on traditional history painting, producing scenes from current events or controversial news in a nearly journalistic, realistic manner. The rapid brush strokes of a rich range of black and grey tones capture the light, action, atmosphere, violence, smoke and fire of violent conflict, the actions of man amid the grandeur of nature on the rough ocean waters. Edouard Manet (1832 - 1883) was a French realist painter and one of the founders of the French Impressionist movement whose controversial paintings marked the founding of modern art. Pursuing art at a young age, Manet studied for 6 years under the academic painter Thomas Couture, and on trips abroad encountered the Dutch masters as well as the Spanish painters Velazquez and Goya. Opening his own studio in Paris, Manet produced many paintings under the influence of the Realism of Courbet, painting scenes from modern life. His masterpieces Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia of 1863 aroused great controversy, and though the artist continued to exhibit in the official Paris Salon he befriended Degas, Monet, Renoir, and other key Impressionist painters. Painting in a loose, sketchy manner of painterly brush strokes and flattened forms which some found to be unfinished, Manet produced many scenes of bohemian cafe nightlife, journalistic scenes of wars and current events, as well subjects from the streets of Paris with such a spontaneity and compositional innovation that they made a lasting influence on younger generations of artists and enshrined him as the true "painter of modern life". Though the artist died young, Manet created paintings that were the lodestone and rallying point for the school of Impressionism and the founders of modern painting.