Vintage 1974 Manet "The Races" Black and White Art Plate

A vintage 1974 reproduction of Edouard Manet's (1832-1883) The Races (1864). Black and white horse racing art plate affixed to chipboard backing for maximum ease in styling, propping, or framing.

Image: 7.5" x 5.25"

1974 commentary: During a good part of his life Edouard Manet was severely, often maliciously, criticized by his contemporaries — artists, critics, and laymen alike. When he was buried in the small cemetery at Passy, Degas, who was always so economical with a compliment, was heard to remark: "He was much greater than we thought."

"You will never be more than the Daumier of your time." This was the judgment of the painter and art teacher Thomas Couture when he looked at young Manet's paintings, which departed in subject matter and technique from the sleek academic classicism of Couture and his less rebellious students.

In his prints, Manet does indeed remind us of the great Daumier in his mastery of lithography.

Manet was not a prolific maker of prints. He made etchings after the works of Goya, and interpretations of his own paintings. When the publisher Codart, who was attempting to arouse interest in lithography, sent him some stones on which to experiment, he was enormously intrigued, and in the course of the next ten years produced about twenty prints.

The Races is probably his finest effort in this medium, and comes closer than any other graphic work to expressing the tenets of Impressionist theory. One is reminded of the black-and-white block prints by Hokusai and his contemporaries that were imported from Japan. The French artists of Manet's group knew, admired, and borrowed from these masterpieces. Like the Japanese, the Impressionists strove to suggest the movement, not the static quality, of all they observed—a tree or flower blown by the wind, a person walking, or a group of horses coming down the homestretch. Everything in this print is blurred; there are no strong defining lines, no sharp edges or limits. Yet all is clear to the observer-the excitement in the stands and along the rail, and the mad scramble of horses and jockeys.