The Funeral
Edouard Manet, ca. 1867
About this artwork
Édouard Manet’s *The Funeral* (ca 1867) captures a poignant moment of Parisian life during the Second Empire, depicting a somber funeral procession winding through the rain-slicked streets. Rendered in oil on canvas, this 28⅝ × 35⅝-inch work blends landscape and urban scene, showcasing the artist’s signature loose brushwork and flattened composition. Manet, a pivotal figure bridging Realism and Impressionism, elevates an everyday bourgeois ritual—marked by black-clad mourners and a horse-drawn hearse—into a modern tableau, drawing from Spanish masters like Velázquez while observing contemporary France. Painted amid Paris’s rapid Haussmannization, the scene reflects the city’s transformation and the anonymity of urban existence. The misty atmosphere and muted palette evoke transience, with the vast sky dominating the canvas to underscore human fragility. Though not a formal Impressionist yet, Manet’s innovative approach challenged academic conventions, paving the way for later movements by prioritizing direct observation over idealization. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s European Paintings department (Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, 1909), *The Funeral* invites visitors to ponder mortality amid the bustle of 19th-century Paris—a timeless reminder of life’s quiet dramas.