The Déjeuner sur l'herbe Painting

My admiration for Manet’s work is undeniable. Like him, I believe that one of the major dimensions of painting is revealed to us by Velasquez. We know Manet’s taste for a certain provocation. In this game, I humbly pay homage to him with this luncheon on the grass where it is the men who are naked and a woman who looks. Hence the subtitle. Painting the light and the reflections of the river was a great pleasure. The photo of the painting is poor; the color is veiled on the right. I will redo it, I promise. I painted this canvas in memory of those moments of exhaustion and pleasure we experienced, my nephew whom I had hired, a former student who became a friend who came to help us, and I, when we were building another floor on my house in the middle of August under a scorching sun. Around noon, when the heat became unbearable, burning, dirty, and sweaty, we would throw ourselves naked into the cool water of the Volp, the stream dominated by my house. The light was so beautiful that I took a photo to mark the scene. Two years later, this painting was born. A rather imposing format allows easy entry into the undergrowth. I painted under the trees, coming to life with the tip of the brush or the bristle of the brush. I was in it. I found the scene again with its warm freshness of shaded water, its quiet voluptuousness of being naked, its conviviality of Eden. And I added my partner’s gaze through the sudden pictorial incarnation of her legs. Did she take the photo? No. Yet she watches.