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50 free Edouard Manet trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Édouard Manet failed the Navy exam twice, scandalised Paris with a picnic and a courtesan, and spent his life insisting he belonged in the official Salon while every young Impressionist copied him. He never showed with them, yet they called him the father of modern painting. These 50 questions cover the man and the pictures: the judge's son and the Swedish godfather, Couture's studio, the Salon des Refusés, and the two canvases that started it all. You will get Olympia's model, cat and subscription, the Déjeuner's hidden brothers and borrowed Raphael poses, Music in the Tuileries and its Lusitania connection, the three Executions of Maximilian, The Railway at Saint-Lazare, Berthe Morisot and the marriage that made her family, and the impossible mirror of A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Easy questions cover the Orsay and the scandals; the hard tier asks about Oloron-Sainte-Marie, Malcolm Park, Kunsthalle Mannheim and Brasserie Reichshoffen. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two early Manet paintings, shown in 1863 and 1865, caused the great scandals?
Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia
They are called watershed paintings marking the start of modern art.
Q 02Which career did Manet's father originally intend for him?
Naval officer
He sailed to Rio on a training vessel in 1848 and failed the Navy exam twice.
Q 03Under which academic painter did Manet study from 1850 to 1856?
Thomas Couture
Couture was later horrified by pupils' 'degenerate' subjects like The Absinthe Drinker.
Q 04Which two Spanish masters and one Dutchman shaped Manet's early style?
Velázquez, Goya and Frans Hals
He copied Velázquez and Titian in the Louvre and travelled in the 1850s.
Q 05At which 1863 alternative exhibition was Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe shown?
Salon des Refusés
Napoleon III set it up after the jury took only 2,217 of 5,000 submissions.
Q 06What was the original title of Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe?
Le Bain
One critic said it looked painted with a 'floor mop'; Zola later used it in L'Œuvre.
Q 07Which Raimondi engraving after Raphael supplied the poses of the Déjeuner's main figures?
The Judgement of Paris
Giorgione's Pastoral Concert and The Tempest are the other cited precedents.
Q 08Whose Symphony in White shared the 1863 rejects' limelight with the Déjeuner?
James McNeill Whistler
The two works were the most discussed in what became one of the most famous shows ever.
Q 09Which Titian painting supplied the pose for Olympia?
Venus of Urbino
Goya's Nude Maja is another echo; the alert black cat replaces Titian's sleeping dog.
Q 10Who was the nineteen-year-old model for Olympia?
Victorine Meurent
She also posed for the Déjeuner and The Railway and became a painter herself.
Q 11What animal sits alert at the foot of Olympia's bed?
A black cat
It strikes a rebellious note against the sleeping dog in Titian's Venus of Urbino.
Q 12Who organised the 1890 public subscription that gave Olympia to the French state?
Claude Monet
It now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay.
Q 13Which Paris museum holds both Olympia and Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe?
Musée d'Orsay
Olympia was so provocative in 1865 that guards had to stop viewers attacking it.
Q 14Which two of Manet's relatives posed for the men in Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe?
Q 21Why did Manet refuse to show with the Impressionists?
He preferred the official Salon
He also did not want to be seen as the representative of a group identity.
Q 22Which poet and which composer appear in the crowd of Music in the Tuileries?
Baudelaire and Offenbach
Visitors threatened to destroy it in 1862; Delacroix was one of its few defenders.
Q 23Which two cities share Music in the Tuileries under a 1915 bequest?
London and Dublin
Hugh Lane went down with the Lusitania in 1915 leaving an unwitnessed codicil.
His brothers and brother-in-law
The right-hand man blends Eugène and Gustave; the other is Dutch sculptor Ferdinand Leenhoff.
Q 15Whom did Manet marry in 1863, a Dutch piano teacher two years his senior?
Suzanne Leenhoff
She had taught the Manet boys piano and may have been his father's mistress.
Q 16Who was Léon Leenhoff, the boy in Boy Carrying a Sword and Boy Blowing Bubbles?
Suzanne's son, possibly Manet's
He posed eighteen times between 1859 and 1872; his father may have been either Manet.
Q 17Which painter became Manet's sister-in-law by marrying his brother Eugène in 1874?
Berthe Morisot
She convinced him to try plein air painting and appears in many of his portraits.
Q 18Which Rococo painter was the supposed great-uncle of Manet's sister-in-law Berthe?
Fragonard
Her mother was Fragonard's great-niece; Corot introduced her to plein air.
Q 19Who was Manet's only formal student?
Eva Gonzalès
She was the daughter of novelist Emmanuel Gonzalès.
Q 20What name was given to the circle of painters around Manet and Morisot?
Batignolles group
Degas, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Cézanne and Pissarro were drawn in through Morisot.
Q 24Which Habsburg ruler's death by Mexican firing squad did Manet paint three times?
Maximilian
Neither the paintings nor the lithograph could be shown in France; they look back to Goya.
Q 25Who reassembled the cut-up fragments of Manet's earlier firing-squad painting?
Edgar Degas
The National Gallery bought the pieces in 1918 and united them on one canvas in 1992.
Q 26Which German city's Kunsthalle holds the final 1868–69 Execution painting?
Mannheim
All five versions were shown together in London and Mannheim in 1992–93.
Q 27Which American Civil War sea battle off the French coast did Manet paint in 1864?
Kearsarge v. Alabama
The Battle of Cherbourg may have been witnessed by the artist himself.
Q 28Which Paris station gives its alternative title to The Railway of 1873?
Gare Saint-Lazare
The only evidence of a train is its white cloud of steam behind an iron grating.
Q 29Which Washington museum owns The Railway?
National Gallery of Art
Critics in 1874 found its subject baffling and its execution sketchy.
Q 30What was Manet's last major work, shown at the 1882 Salon?
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
Afterwards he limited himself to small formats, mostly flowers in glass vases.