Reimagining Manet

*Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (d'après Manet)* was painted while Picasso was living at La Californie with Jacqueline Roque. It reinterprets Manet's painting in Picasso's own way, and it's worth comparing with Manet's original, *Luncheon on the Grass*.

Picasso is said to have approached the study of painting the same way from childhood through youth to old age. That was true when he first arrived in Paris and was trying to climb out of obscurity. He toured the city's museums, copying other artists' works and working out for himself which movements were developing, and through whom. He kept reinterpreting past paintings, producing 15 versions of Delacroix's *Women of Algiers*, 44 of Velázquez's *Las Meninas*, and 27 of Manet's *Luncheon on the Grass*, the work we see here. Even in old age he never gave up his inquiry, repeatedly painting the works of earlier masters and giving them new life in his own way. This painting is one of them.