Who painted 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe'?

Édouard Manet painted *Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe* (“The Luncheon on the Grass”).

Manet created the large oil painting in 1862–1863, originally calling it *Le Bain* (“The Bath”). It shows a nude woman seated with two fully dressed men during a picnic, while another lightly clothed woman bathes in the background. The modern setting and the woman’s direct gaze challenged conventional expectations about historical and mythological painting.

The Paris Salon rejected the work in 1863, but Emperor Napoleon III permitted rejected artists to exhibit in the Salon des Refusés. Manet’s painting became one of that exhibition’s most notorious works, provoking criticism for both its subject and its loose, conspicuous brushwork. It did not sell immediately and remained in Manet’s possession for years.

A common mix-up is Paul Cézanne’s later painting with the same French title, made around 1876–1877. Claude Monet also painted a related *Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe* in 1865–1866. Manet’s original is now held by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.