France: Le Café-Concert (The Cafe-Concert). Oil on canvas, Édouard Manet (1832-1883), c. 1879

Impressionist painter, Édouard Manet often captured café scenes depicting social life at the end of the nineteenth century as depicted in this painting, The Café-Concert.

The setting has been identified as the Brasserie Reichshoffen on the Boulevard Rochechouart. Manet shows us men and women in the new brasseries and cafes of Paris, which presents the viewer with an alternate view of new Parisian life. Manet claimed he was painting 'des oeuvres sinceres' or 'sincere works'. The women depicted in these scenes were courting certain risks with regards to perception and morality.

In, The Café-Concert, Manet presents a café-concert in which three central figures form a triangle but are all engaged in opposite directions. The scene of a café-concert should be casual but Manet hints at separation. The waitress enjoys a beer, the woman at the bar smokes a cigarette and appears subdued, the man appears at his ease and watches the performance (the singer known as 'La Belle Polonaise' is reflected in the mirror in the background of the painting).

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Pictures From History