_Olympia_ was far in advance of anything the artist had yet attempted. In composition it recalls Velazquez, Goya, and Titian. A girl, anæmic and decidedly unprepossessing, quite nude, is stretched upon a couch covered with an Indian shawl of yellowish tint. Behind is a negress, with a bouquet of flowers. At the foot of the bed a black cat strikes a sharp note of colour against the white linen. Gautier and Barbey D’Aurevilly—both men of exotic genius—received the painting with great favour. They found themselves alone in their opinions. Again the subject displeased the crowd, whilst the extraordinary technique exasperated the art world. Even Courbet, reformer as he was, repudiated it. “It is flat and lacks modelling. It looks like the queen of spades coming out of a bath.” Manet retorted: “He bores us with his modelling. Courbet’s idea of rotundity is a billiard-ball.” The general verdict, however, was one in which ridicule and mockery were equally mixed. A religious picture, _Christ reviled by the Soldiers_, received no greater encouragement, and in the next Salon Manet was rejected without mercy. _Le Fifre de la Garde_ and _The Tragic Actor_ were both refused. He had provoked such fierce animosity that he was even excluded from the representative exhibition of French art included in the Universal Exhibition of 1867. Luckily, no longer dependent for money on his art, Manet was able to exhibit under more favourable circumstances. Like Rodin a few years ago, Manet opened a large gallery in the Avenue de l’Alma, which he shared with Courbet. Here he collected fifty works, including the _Boy with the Sword_, several Spanish subjects, seascapes, portraits, studies of still life, aquafortes, even copies. A catalogue was issued containing a short introduction. “The artist does not say to you to-day, Come and see flawless works, but, Come and see sincere works.” Another sentence shares with a title of Claude Monet’s the origin of the generic phrase, “Impressionism.” “It is the effect of sincerity to give to a painter’s works a character that makes them resemble a protest, whereas the painter has only thought of rendering his impression.” Manet never considered himself as a man in revolt.