Édouard Manet | Swallows, 1873

'Swallows' was created in 1873 by French modernist painter Édouard Manet (1832-1883).

The artist’s mother in black and Madame Manet in white have taken their ease on a field behind the dunes, with their billowing skirts and bonnets tied on with veils.

The sun has just been shining, but now the sky is overcast; the artist’s wife has lowered the still opened parasol to her lap, and low flying swallows herald the change in weather.

All this has nothing anecdotal about it, but is merely the expression of the mood of the landscape, which is accentuated on the far horizon in the shape of windmills, the small church and rooftops of the village.

Manet found an understanding buyer for the painting in Paris immediately after his return, which did not prevent the Salon of 1874 from rejecting it.

The jury could not accustom itself as yet to the sketchy quality of this kind of painting.

'Mr. Manet’s talent is made up of simplicity and justice.

Without a doubt, before the incredulous nature of some of my compatriots, he will have decided to interrogate reality, all alone; he will have refused all acquired knowledge; all traditional experience; he would have wanted to take art from the beginning, which is to say, the precise observation of objects'.

- Émile Zola

Émile Zola by Édouard Manet, 1868

'Il talento del Signor Manet è fatto di semplicità e di esattezza.

Senza dubbio, davanti alla natura incredibile di alcuni dei suoi colleghi si sarà deciso ad interrogare la realtà, solo con sé stesso: avrà rifiutato tutta la perizia acquisita, tutta l'antica esperienza, avrà voluto prendere l'arte dall'inizio, cioè dall'osservazione esatta degli oggetti.

Si è dunque messo coraggiosamente di fronte a un soggetto, ha visto questo soggetto per larghe macchie, per opposizioni vigorose, e ha dipinto ogni cosa così come la vedeva'.

- Émile Zola