Rue Mossnier with Knife Grinder

Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia, engendered great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.... Born into an upper class household with strong political connections, Manet rejected the future originally envisioned for him, and became engrossed in the world of painting. He married Suzanne Leenhoff in 1863. The last 20 years of Manet's life saw him form bonds with other great artists of the time, and develop his own style that would be heralded as innovative and serve as a major influence for future painters. Édouard Manet was born in Paris on 23 January 1832, to an affluent and well connected family.
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The Philadelphia Museum of Art has collections of more than 227,000 objects that include "world-class holdings of European and American paintings, prints, drawings and decorative arts" and is among the largest art museums in the United States. Its main building is located at the west end of Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway, near the south end of Fairmount Park and is visited by more than 800,000 people annually. Other museum sites... include the Rodin Museum, also located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Perelman Building, across the street from the Main Building, and several other historic sites. The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building opened in 2007 and houses some of the Museum's more popular collections, as well as over 200,000 books and periodicals and 1.6 million other documents. The Museum was established in 1876 in conjunction with the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Fairmount Park. Originally called the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, and housed in the Centennial Exposition's Memorial Hall, it opened its doors to the public on May 10, 1877.
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