Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Edouard Manet - The Balcony - Google Art Project.jpg

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Original – On the balcony are depicted to the left is Berthe Morisot, who became in 1874 the wife of Manet's brother, Eugène. In the centre is the painter Jean Baptiste Antoine Guillemet. On the right is violinist Fanny Claus.
Reason
It is an important and well known painting made 1868 by Édouard Manet. It was one of the paintings that together with Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass (Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe), painted 1863 marked the beginning of the impressionism. It is considered inovative and iconic and it went against the conventions. When exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1869, it was considered unusual. It depicts among others Berthe Morisot, Manet's favourite model 'for the first time. She was a painter herself, and Édouard Manet's syster in law.
The Museé d'Orsay describes the painting:

The painting tells no story or anecdote; the protagonists are frozen, as if isolated in an interior dream, evidence that Manet was freeing himself from academic constraints, despite the obvious reference to Goya's Majas at the Balcony. At its presentation at the 1869 Salon, this enigmatic group portrait was overwhelmingly misunderstood.[1]

The contrast of colors with the background completely black, the white faces and clothes, the blue tie of the man, and the green railings bold green drew much attention, at the time when the public was used to the dull academic paintings and their style.
Articles in which this image appears
The Balcony (painting), (own article) Western painting, (lead picture) Luncheon in the Studio, Édouard Manet and List of paintings by Édouard Manet
FP category for this image
Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Artwork/Paintings
Creator
Édouard Manet

Promoted File:Edouard Manet - The Balcony - Google Art Project.jpg --Armbrust The Homunculus 02:30, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]