Édouard Manet
Early life

Édouard Manet was born in Paris on 23 January 1832, in the ancestral hôtel particulier (mansion) on the Rue des Petits Augustins (now Rue Bonaparte) to an affluent and well-connected family. His mother, Eugénie-Desirée Fournier, was the daughter of a diplomat and goddaughter of the Swedish crown prince Charles Bernadotte, from whom the Swedish monarchs are descended. His father, Auguste Manet, was a French judge who expected Édouard to pursue a career in law. His uncle, Edmond Fournier, encouraged him to pursue painting and took young Manet to the Louvre. In 1844, he enrolled at secondary school, the Collège Rollin, where he boarded until 1848. He showed little academic talent and was generally unhappy at the school. In 1845, at the advice of his uncle, Manet enrolled in a special course of drawing where he met Antonin Proust, future Minister of Fine Arts and subsequent lifelong friend.

At his father's suggestion, in 1848 he sailed on a training vessel to Rio de Janeiro. After he twice failed the examination to join the Navy, his father relented to his wishes to pursue an art education. From 1850 to 1856, Manet studied under the academic painter Thomas Couture. Couture encouraged his students to paint contemporary life, though he would eventually be horrified by Manet's choice of lower-class and "degenerate" subjects such as The Absinthe Drinker. In his spare time, Manet copied Old Masters such as Diego Velázquez and Titian in the Louvre.

From 1853 to 1856, Manet made brief visits to Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, during which time he was influenced by the Dutch painter Frans Hals and the Spanish artists Velázquez and Francisco José de Goya.
detectable_format:json_format