Widely known as the Luncheon on the Grass, Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe is a large oil on canvas painting, created by the French modernist painter Edouard Manet in 1862-1863. It features a female nude and a scantily dressed female bather on a picnic spot with two fully dressed men in a rural setting. Although female nudes are prevalent throughout the history of art, they had always represented figures from mythology or allegory. But by placing a female nude and a scantily dressed female bather on a picnic, along with two fully dressed men in a rural setting, Manet re-contextualized the age-old subject and redefined what constituted as fine art and that too with a hint of irony. It was one of the several impressionist works that broke away from the classical view that art should obey and follow the established conventions to seek and achieve timelessness. Luncheon on the Grass is the testimony to Manet's refusal to conform to convention and his initiation of a new freedom from traditional subjects and modes of representation that can perhaps be considered as the departure point for Modern Art.

Luncheon on the Grass by Edouard Manet depicts a nude woman casually lunching with two fully dressed men. Her body is starkly lit and she stares directly at the viewer, while her clothes, a basket of fruit and a round loaf of bread are lying in front of them. Ignoring or being indifferent about the presence of a nude woman before them, the two dressed young men seem to be engrossed in some serious conversation. In the background, a lightly clad woman washes in a stream, whose presence is almost ghostly and surreal due to her small size in comparison to the large figures in the foreground and she seems to float above them. As the roughly painted background lacks depth, it gives the impression that it is not the scene of an outdoor picnic and it is arranged in a studio. The impression is reinforced by the use of broad studio lights, which cast almost no shadows. Besides, the hat of the man on the right has a tassel on it, a kind normally wore indoors.

Lunceonh on the Grass was rejected by the salon the official art exhibition of the French Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, that displayed painting approved by the official French academy. The rejection was occasioned not so much by the female nude, although she has no explicit reason to be naked. It is evident that she is not a mythological figure, she is just a normal female lunch companion, while both her male counterparts are clothed. But the incompatible presence of the nude woman in a modern setting, accompanied by her male counterparts dressed in contemporary clothes suggested that the women were not goddesses, but models or possibly prostitutes and the total effect seemed to be obscene in the eyes of the jury.The style of painting of Manet and his refusal to make subtle gradations between the light and dark part of the painting, as well as his deliberately shallow depth and perspective, were also considered avant-garde. Apart from that, some critics were also intrigued by the gaze of the nude woman. It is indeterminable whether she is challenging or accepting the viewer, whether she is looking past the viewer or engaging the viewer or even looking at the viewer at all.

It is considered by many that the landscape of the painting is probably L'Île-Saint-Denis, located 9.4 km from the centre of Paris and just up the Seine from the family property of Manet in Gennevilliers. As he often used real models and the people he knew, the female nude is thought to be Victorine Meurent, who was his favourite model and later posed for his ‘Olympia’. While the male figure on the right was based on a fusion of his two brothers, Eugène and Gustave Manet, the other man is based on his brother-in-law, Dutch sculptor Ferdinand Leenhoff.

As the Luncheon on the Grass was rejected by the Salon, Manet displayed the painting at the Salon des Refuses, an alternative salon established by those who had been refused entry to the official one, where the painting sparked public notoriety and controversy

The composition of Luncheon on the Grass by Edouard Manet is directly inspired by the Pastoral Concert, a painting by Titian and the central group from the Marcantonio Raimondi engraving after Raphael's Judgement of Paris. However, the work undoubtedly inspired Impressionists, which is evident from Water Lilies by Claude Monet and The Luncheon of the Boating Party by Pierre- Auguste Renoir.