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Apartment · Madeleine (8th) · 8e arrondissement

4 rue Lavoisier

The buildingStill standing
Getting inOutside only
What's there nowSomeone else

Private. Nothing marks the studio and there is nothing to see but the façade.

The studio Édouard Manet kept from around 1856 to 1859, in the first years after he left Thomas Couture's teaching and began working on his own.

Address
4 rue Lavoisier, 75008 Paris
Years
Manet's studio from roughly 1856 to 1859

The place, briefly

Édouard Manet maintained a studio at 4 rue Lavoisier for roughly three years from 1856. He was in his mid-twenties, had recently finished six years in the studio of the academic painter Thomas Couture, and was working out what to do without a teacher.

These are the years before anything famous. The pictures that made him notorious — the Déjeuner sur l'herbe of 1863, the Olympia shown in 1865 — were still ahead, and what he was doing here was closer to sorting out his relationship to Spanish painting and to the Louvre than to scandalising anybody.

The building stands, in a quiet corner of the 8th behind the Madeleine. It is private and unmarked.

Key facts

Manet's studio
Roughly 1856 to 1859
What came before
Six years in Thomas Couture's studio
What came after
The rue Guyot studio, and the Salon scandals of the 1860s
Access
Private building — exterior only

Timeline

  1. 1856

    Manet takes a studio at 4 rue Lavoisier after leaving Couture.

  2. 1859

    He moves on; a studio on the rue Guyot follows in the 1860s.

On the map

Questions before you go

What did Manet paint at 4 rue Lavoisier?

It was his working studio in the late 1850s, before the Salon scandals. The famous pictures came later, from the rue Guyot studio and after.

Is anything marked?

No. The building is private and carries no plaque.

People who knew this place

Illustrated portrait of Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet

French · Painter

Manet's studio in the years immediately after he left Thomas Couture's teaching, before the Salon scandals of the 1860s.

Within walking distance

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