Many art historians consider Edouard Manet to be the father of modern art. Although often cited alongside the Impressionists, he was not a member of their group and never exhibited in their Salon des Re fuse es. Instead, he pioneered a path between realism and impressionism, choosing contemporary subjects and composing them in a truly modern fashion. A number of Manet's paintings provoked outrage and scandal, but his most controversial work was Le De jeuner sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass ), which showed a naked woman enjoying a picnic beside two fully and conventionally, if rather exotically,