Impasto - thick build up of paint.
"The picnic on the grass" was based on an old drawing possibly by Raphael in the Renaissance. Accepted and admired by the public as an "old" work, but caused an outrage when shown as contemporary people like themselves.
The Realist painters abandoned completely anything fictitious or artificial in painting. They took subjects from everyday life regardless of how primitive or unsavory they have seemed by the academic opinion of the period. The careful craftsmanship of the academies was discarded in favour of a vigorous spontaneous style and any subject was rejected which they could see and react to themselves.
Art again became an expression of ordinary people in ordinary situations after being the plaything of the courts and the aristocracy since the Renaissance.
Courbet
(1819 to 1877) gave true to life presentation as simple, earthly subjects
- workers, farmers, animals, in a thick impasto of paint applied with the
palette knife, a technique which shocked the French academies.
Manet
(1833 to 1883) painted what he saw in a broad manner which gave a hint
of impressionism in his analysis of light. He was influenced by the vitality
and realism of the Spanish painters and drew by the pictorial pattern of light
and dark of the Japanese print which became popular in Europe.
Manet chose his subjects from the daily scene - cafe's, bars, parks, races etc. together with the studies from famous paintings which he modernized. The discovery of Photography had an influence on his work as he tried to capture the impression of movement in a snapshot.
In 1863 painters rejected by the Salons banded together and led by Manet, whose painting "The Picnic" had caused a sandal at the Salon de Refuses, formed what was to become the French Impressionist school.