Edouard Manet: Making History: Manet's Execution of Maximilian from the National Gallery, London

Édouard Manet (1832–1883) was a French modernist painter and one of the first nineteenth-century artists to paint modern life. Born into an upper-class Paris household, he rejected the naval career envisioned for him and devoted himself to painting. His early masterworks "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" (1863) and "Olympia" (1865) caused great controversy with critics and the Academy but were embraced by progressive artists. A pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism, he also painted "The Execution of Maximilian" (c. 1867–68), the second of five versions he made of the 1867 event.