Édouard Manet is thought of as a leading light of the Impressionists, but actually, although he was associated with them and was admired by Monet and Renoir, he never actually exhibited at any of the Impressionist Exhibitions in Paris. He was more of a precursor to the new era of artistic impressionism, and still had a foot planted firmly in realism. His early work was, however, controversial, and he scandalised critics and public alike, most notably with Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia (both 1863), but even these were modelled on old classical masterpieces: Giorgione’s Pastoral Concert (1509) and Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) respectively. Let’s have a quick look and see if you can spot, in the mind of a nineteenth century purist, the elements of Manet’s work that transformed elegant classicism into lewd modernism:
However, the subject of this blog is actually the Manet that is arguably the most recognisable…the celebrated A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. The Folies Bergère was the most famous of Paris’s café-concert halls and was noted at this time for its new-fangled electric lights. We see the frontal image of a barmaid looking out at us from behind her counter, and behind her a huge mirror in which we see reflected the back of the barmaid along with the scene that she herself is observing. There are the members of the audience, watching the show, and indeed an element of the show itself: the legs of the trapeze artist which appear in the very top-left corner of the picture.
The woman behind the bar was actually a real person, known as Suzon, who worked at the Folies Bergère during the early 1880s, and whom Manet painted in his studio. The gentleman at the bar was Manet’s neighbour. The bottles, fruit and vase of flowers arranged on the counter are replicated with all the precision of a still life painting, and interesting to note – for such a French-feeling painting – the bottles of British beer: yes, Bass Pale Ale of all things! The loose British connection is maintained: this famous painting is held not in Paris but at the Courtauld Gallery, London.
