The artistic ideas of Claude Lantier were given to Zola by his friend _Édouard Manet_, the father of Impressionism, and in that way the creator of the newest form of art. Manet appeared for the first time in 1862. In 1865, when the Committee of the Salon gave up a few secondary rooms to the rejected, the first of his pictures which made any sensation were to be seen--a "Scourging of Christ" and a picture of a girl with a cat resting--both invariably surrounded by a dense circle of the scornful. Forty years before, the first works of the Romanticists, whose doctrine was likewise scoffed at in the formula _Le laid c'est le beau_, had called forth a similar outcry against the want of taste common to them all. A generation later people laughed at "The Funeral in Ornans," and now the same derision was directed against Manet, who completed Courbet's work. His pictures were held to be a practical joke which the painter was playing upon the public, the most unheard of farce that had ever been painted. If any one had declared that these works would give the impulse to a revolution in art, people would have turned their backs upon him or thought that he was jesting. "Criticism treated Manet," wrote Zola, "as a kind of buffoon who put out his tongue for the amusement of street boys." The rage against "The Scourging of Christ" went so far that the picture had to be protected by special precautions from the assaults of sticks and umbrellas.
But the matter took a somewhat different aspect when, five years afterwards, from twenty to thirty more recent pictures were exhibited together in Manet's studio. Whether it was because the aims of the painter had become clearer in the meanwhile, or because his works suffered less from the proximity of others, they made an impression, and that although they represented nothing in the least adventurous and sensational. Life-size figures, light and almost without shadow, rowed over blue water, hung out white linen, watered green flower-pots, and leant against grey walls. The light colours placed immediately beside each other had a bizarre effect on the eye accustomed to chiaroscuro. The eye, which, like the human spirit, has its habitudes, and believes that it always sees nature as she is painted, was irritated by these delicately chosen tone-values which seemed to it arbitrary, by these novel harmonies which it took for discords. Nevertheless the clarity of the pictures made a striking effect, and something of "Manet's sun" lingered in the memory. People still laughed, only not so loud, and they gave Manet credit for having the courage of his convictions. "A remarkable circumstance has to be recorded. A young painter has followed his personal impressions quite ingenuously, and has painted a few things which are not altogether in accord with the principles taught in the schools. In this way he has executed pictures which have been a source of offence to eyes accustomed to other paintings. But now, instead of abusing the young artist through thick and thin, we must be first clear as to why our eyes have been offended, and whether they ought to have been." With these words criticism began to take Manet seriously. Charles Ephrussi and Duranty, besides Zola, came forward as his first literary champions in the press. "Manet is bold" was now the phrase used about him in public. The Impressionists took the salon by storm. And Manet's bright and radiant sun was seen to be a better thing than the brown sauce of the Bolognese. It was as if a strong power had suddenly deranged the focus of opinion in all the studios, and Manet's victory brought the same salvation to French art as that of Delacroix had done forty years before and that of Courbet ten years before. _Manet et manebit._ Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet are the three great names of modern French painting, the names of the men who gave it the most decisive impulses.