Modern Art and Visual Culture 1660-1900

Robert Herbert

Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988

Robert Herbert

Impressionism:Art, Leisure,andParisianSociety

N ewHaven: Yale University Press, 1988

fier Three ' and Café~Concert

' einvaded the boulevards, concerts have invaded the crowds have invadedeverywhere to the greatjoy ofthe who are getting rich.

arc Constantin, 1872

.read! they used to demand. Spectacles and hussies, that’s , cry today. ‘ . .‘Anon” Paris désert. Lamentation d’unjeremle haussmamse, 4, 8

-able 3harlequin is some compensation for failing to bea : citizen. 5 enry Tuckerman, 1867

’ . detail of Aux Ambassadeurs (P1. 83).

Even a casual glance at successive editions of guide books to Paris, from their beginnings in the 18405 to the end of the “Belle Epoque,” reveals the striking truth: leisure and enter ‑ tainment took an ever‐increasing place in the life of Paris. In the guide books-their very growth is anindex of leisure‑ notices devoted to idle hours and entertainment greatly ex ‑ panded, while those that referred to historic sites and famous buildings simply held their o w n (and visiting such places is, of course, an aspect of leisure). At the end of the century the life of Paris, if one were tojudge by guide books, was dominated by the following: theaters in infinite variety, opera, comic opera, vaudeville, music halls, cafes-concerts, cafes, restau ‑ rants, popular balls, circuses, racetracks, promenades (along streets aswell asin parks and gardens), shopping, and excur‑ sions along the Seine and o u t to the suburbs, excursions that may have includedbathing, boating, riverside dining, dancing, picnicking, or simply promenading. The numbers involved are n o t easy to establish, but they were already noteworthy by the 18605. The American james McCabe estimated that in 1867 theaters in Paris seated atotal of 30,000 on a good night, and in cafes‐concerts, circuses, and other enclosed places, an additional 24,000.1

Tourists came to Paris to enjoy What the natives already prized, an elegant urban culture. The extra revenues they brought contributed fundamentally to Paris’s prosperity, as did the plaudits they lavished on Parisian products catering both to body and to mind. Paradoxically, tourists‐transients bydefinition‐fitted readily into the Parisian culture of enter ‑ tainment and leisure, for the city’s life was sustained by a volatile population. By 1886 the city’s inhabitants numbered 2,345,000, three times the figure for 1831. Furthermore, most of the newcomers had been born outside Paris. From 1875 to 1891, for example, only 70/0 of the net increase in Paris’s population was due to n e w births, 93% to immigration from elsewhere (and these figures do n o t include temporary visitors from abroad and from the provinces). Already by 1872, 7.4°/o of Paris’s residents were foreign‐born, a huge percentage compared to prior generations and to other European cities. By 1891, only 32.2% ofthe capital’s populationhad been born in the city, whereas in London, center of a vast colonial em‑ pire, and in Boston, major city in a nation of immigrants, respectively 62.9% and 38.5% of the inhabitants were native born.

Paris’s population was also marked by a very high per‑ centage of single men and women. Paris and its immediate suburbs had the highest divorce rate in France: in 1885, 47 divorces for every 100,000 people, compared to 3.5 for the rest of the country. Adding legal separations to divorces brought the Paris figure up to 60 per 100,000, compared to 12 for all of France. Moreove r, many Parisians never married a t all, for Paris had the lowest marriage rate among Caucasians in all of Western Europe and the United States. To these revealing facts we might add another: among married couples, 323 per 1 0 0 0 had no children, an unusually high figure for that era.2

These various statistics show usthat the traditional family and the domestic hearth, sovital to middle‐class mores and to traditions of painting earlier in the century, were no longer as central to Parisian life. The foreigners, the provincial immi‑ grants, the temporary visitors, the professional couples with‑

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o u t children, the construction workers and laundresses who left their families in the provinces, these were the ones who populated the Second Empire and the Third Republic. It was among these uprooted peoples, living in a city undergoing constant and drastic alterations, that the flcineur and the impressionist artists took their places. Paris was indeed a city of strangers.

The burgeoning population of Paris formed an ideal clientele for entrepreneurs of distraction, both the owners of the rapidly expanding network of entertainment, and also the municipaland national institutions which treated entertainment asinstruments of policy. Henry Tuckerman, when he visited Paris in 1867, contrasted the “dignity and permanence” of American and British life with that ofParis, whose citizens, he wrote, dwelled in

akind of metropolitan encampment, requiring no domicile except a bedroom for seven hours in the twenty‐four, and passing the remainder of each day and night as nomadic cosmopolites: going to a café to breakfast, a restaurant to dine, an estaminet to smoke, a national library to study, a cabinet de lecture to read the gazettes, a public bath for ablu‑ tion, an open church to pray, a free lecture r o o m to be instructed, a thronged garden to promenade, a theatre to be amused, a museum for science, a royal gallery for art, a municipal ball, literary soirée, or suburban rendezvous, for society.

Unlike james McCabe and other American visitors in 1867, who reveled in all the glitter, Tuckerman understood that leisure and display formed a vital element of French politics, one that was used to great advantage by Louis Napoleon’s government , and one that truly characterized the n e w society of the French capital:

To cultivate illusions is apparently the science of Parisian life; vanity m u s t have its pabulum and fancy her triumph, though pride is sacrificed and sense violated thereby; hence acoincidence of thrift and wit, shrewdness and sentimental‑ i ty, love of excitement and patient endurance, superficial enjoyment and essential deprivation. . . .3

Offenbach and Manet In 1867, when Tuckerman made those observations, one of the great masters of illusion and display reached the heights of a giddy climb to fame. Jacques Offenbach had t w o smash hits that year, both calculated to coincide with the 1867 exposition. La Vie Parisienne, commissioned expressly for the fair, was ready ahead of time (it premiered on 31October 1866), leaving Offenbach and his habitual collaborators, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, several months to prepare La Grande‑ Duchesse deGerolstein. The latter opened on 12April 1867 and was, like its predecessor, a huge success. Offenbach was n o t an impressionist in any sense of the term, but the study of his operettas is sorewarding for the history of Impressionism that it m u s t have its place. Moreover, SiegfriedKracauer’s Offenbach and the Paris of His Time4 is one of the great pieces of cultural history, and in many ways the ideal model for a book on I m ‑ pressionism, even though the author never mentions Manet, Morisot, or Degas. Thanks to his perceptive analysis of Offen‑

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bach, we can find illuminating parallels with . greatly extend o u r understanding of the works of t himself a master of illusion and display. :_

Offenbach’s first major success, Orphée aux enfl' owed some of its vogue to its witty satire of c o n society. jupiter, forever chasing women, was see ; Napoleon, and his jealous wife juno, as Eugenie, Emperor,jupiterneededpublic support, soOffenbac, the classical chorus with voices labeled “public 5; making clear the manipulation of the populace.Jupi .. courtiers used shabby subterfuges to maintain th ‘ and they succeeded, despite the threat of the 01 u stage arevolution, because indulgence in pleasures W to all. “ I n short,” w r o t e Kracauer, “the operetta mad. of all the glamour that surrounded the apparatus 0 f, The fact that there was considerable sting in Offenbaal of the Empire was revealed by Jules janin’s attaca. operetta for profaning “glorious antiquity” throug. sions to contemporary society.5 In La Belle Héle‘ne: Offenbach poked more fun at the vainglory whic terized Louis Napoleon’s reign (Kracauer reminds u‘ masked ball in 1857, Eugénie appeared asNight, wi Way of diamonds, and t w o others came as the B at sunset, and the Sea of Marmora on a misty day) adultery is frankly justified for reasons of state, 4-1 members of Louis Napoleon’s cour t , Orestes parad' on the “boulevards” of Sparta, boasting that the state ‘3; wil l pay for his excesses. "

In 1866 and 1867, with La Vie Parisienhe and La Duchesse de Gerolstein, Offenbach dropped mytholo'. tings in favor of contemporary life. La Vie Parisienne, the Gare Saint‐Lazare, asa party returns from the fas resor t of Trouville; its final act takes place in acafe-r. In between, the visitors Baron and Baroness de Gonn are victims of the boulevardiers Gardefeu and Bob' 5 take advantage of the foreigners’ desires to attend 51 plays, musicals, and cafes‐concerts, and to embark on escapades. Appropriate to the Paris exposition, for " was initially commissioned, La Vie Parisierme givk» prominent roles to foreigners, and its chorus, suitably if: is composed of foreign tourists: '

We are going to invade The sovereign city, The resor t of pleasure.

In La Grande-Duchesse deGerolstein, set in the fiction,‘ ofGerolstein, one ofthe principal characters is General always anxious to enjoy war; periodically heshoots is into the air and sniffs the fumes, in preference to Analogies with contemporaries were n o t hard to ” Offenbach had to cope repeatedly with the gove 5'” censors.6 His original title, simply La Grande-Duch ]‘ rejected on the grounds that Russia might take offe‑ were thought that Catherine II were being satirized ( A 1 II was in Paris for the exposition). Further, the censor o‘ to a young general’s declaration, “Madam, I havej * the war in eighteen days,” fearing that it would be til‑ a reference to Moltke’s defeat of the Austrians at 3.111 a campaign that had lasted eighteen days (Offenbach ti

lClS With Mal “ ” . Th b'e t' 5 Qtsofar‐fetched.works Ofthis four days ) C0 J 6 i o n wa nfigs widespread discussion in 1867 of the possibility fl. ouis Napoleon might again venture on war asa way fidifying his control, and the operetta was treading on ~te ground by havmg the Grand Duchess s ministers plan ,‘ as3solution to their own difficulties. More absurdly, ,, sor 3150 forbade Hortense Schneider to wear animagin‑ {4o 31decoration, lest it offend one or another of the Visit‑ “oyaltY (she subsequently had her portrait painted as the nd Duchess, w e a r i n g the forbiddengrand cordonparodtque). t, reviewing the social role of Offenbach’s operettas from , to 1867, the year of La Grande-Durhesse, Kracauer .onstrated that Offenbach’s operettas used illuSion and My as devices to undermine the pompous ex t e r i o r of pire, and to reveal the political truths that lay beneath. The bachiade, he w ro t e ,

llée aux enfers . [ t i r e o f Conte n n, was seen f. as Eugénie. ‘,soOffenbach 3d “public 0p aulace. Jupiteri, iaintain their 5. Ofthe Olwnp pleasures was 0 >peretta made J lpparatus of p InOffenbach’ inin’s attacks t. W” through if“.‑ Belle Héléne 0: glory which i .'reminds usth Night, with a= 16 as the BOSP misty day) l ‑ S of state, an :stes parades ' hat the state’s c

, 'd originated in anepoch in which social reality had been 4aniSth by the Emperor’s orders, and for many years it tadflourished in the gap that was left. Thoroughly ambigu‑ .us asit was, it had fulfilled a revolutionary function under 5 edictatorship, that of scourging corruption and authori‑ wrianism, and holding up the principle of freedom. To be ure, its satire hadbeen clothed in agarment of frivolity and concealed in an atmosphere of intoxication, in accordance ith the requirements of the Second Empire. But the fri‑

fvolity went deeper than the world of fashionable Bohemia could see. . At atime when the bourgeoisie were politically stagnant and the Left was impotent, Offenbach’s operettas had been -'the most definite form of revolutionary protest. It released ‘gusts of laughter, which shattered the compulsory silence ‘and lured the public towards opposition, while seeming ‘ only to amuse them. AWhat about the parallels with Manet in all of this? They "r ly leap to the eye, asthe French would say.8 Manet once presented Offenbach, who can be seen in Music in the Tull‑ a'es (Pl. 42), apicture devoted to one of the most fashionable if the Second Empire’s social pageants. Offenbach is shown n o n g a group of immaculately dressed contemporaries, in ‑ , uding Manet himself, his brother Eugene, Baudelaire, and _autier. The composer’s image would n o t be enough to " arrant comparison with Manet, of course, and it is to his “1eat operettas of the 18605 that we should tu rn . If we look urst at Offenbach’s t w o early successes, Orphée aux En ers 1858) and La Belle Héléne (1864), and then at t w o of Manet’s otorious canvases, his Déjeunersur l’herbe (Pl. 171) andOlym‑ 11:0 (P1. 62), we sha eethat the painter, like the musician and 1- librettists, of edup spoofs of the gods, saucily converted 0 contempora y purposes. The Déjeuner shows t w o men glothed in the apparently casual, but in fact elegant clothing of Ontemporary artists, and t w o women, one nude and the 4'her, in the middle distance, in a diaphanous garment. The ppses of the three foreground figures were taken from the ' V6} gods in Raimondi’s engraving after Raphael’sjudgment of am; the fourth figure is asmucha nymphasa contemporary. Olympia is a modern version of Titian’s Venus of Urbino. . anet replaces the goddess of love with a contemporary Ourtesan, that kind of woman‐Cora Pearl, Blanche d’Anti‑

znne and La Cf, 3dmythologicq if Parisienne op-, Irom the fashion In acafé‐restau ies s deGondre and Bobinet, to attend the I embark onamo >sition, for w h i risz'enne gives Q us, suitably eno

l the fictional du TSis General B0 l he shoots his p' reference to sn hard to find, ._ the governme , ‘ande-Durhesse, 7 it take offense i atirized (Alexanai the censor Objcn; 1, l have just w would be taken . strians at Sado ' foenbach chang

62. Manet, Olympia, 1863. Musée d’Orsay.

gny, Hortense Schneider‐whosepublic prominencesymboli‑ zed the luxury and the hypocrisy of the Second Empire (Cora Pearl was for a time the favorite of Prince Napoleon, the Emperor’s cousin; in 1867 she made a few appearances as Cupid in arevival of Offenbach’s Orphée). In these, and in other pictures, Manet was, like Offenbach,

making fun of tradition by clothing mythological figures in contemporary costume. His citations from past ar t were n o t generally recognized at first, but no one doubted his assault upon the conventions of ar t and, therefore, upon the academic tradition which was deeply embedded in government institu‑ tions. The Déjeuner was refused by the official Salon jury in 1863, but raised a furor when it was shown in the exhibition of rejected artists, the Salon des refuses. Olympia, although accepted by the jury in 1865, was subjected to virulent criticism from the defenders of tradition. jules Janin’s dis‑ comfiture before Offenbach’s bawdy gods was felt again by Manet’s critics, unwilling to see mythological figures, so closely attached to royalty and to the authority of established art, transformed into mischievous commentaries on current society and its mores. Manet’s devotion to the pleasures of eye and brush, we might think, should have disarmed his critics, but his assault upon convention was so outrageous that only years later would the brilliance of his technique become evi‑ dent and the elegance of his life be recognized asof one piece with his art . When Offenbach was completing La Vie Parisienne and La

Grande-Duchesse for the 1867 fair, Manet, hoping to benefit from the same crowds, was preparing his one-artist show in the pavilion hehad erected on the place de l’Alma. His fate was the opposite of Offenbach’s. Few visitors came to his exhibition, and it received scant notice in the press. The rea‑ sons for this are many. He was n o t at all aswell known as Offenbach, and in any event an ar t exhibition would n o t benefit asmuch asan Operetta from the fairgoers’ thirst for entertainment. Equally to the point, Manet’s forum was n o t that of acomic opera, where witty satire was anticipated, and the shocking quality of his style was n o t sufficiently cushioned by clever adaptationsof tradition; thesewouldhavebeenunder‑ stood only by a few insiders.

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Manet’s opposition to authority found another outlet in the summer of 1867, in this case an overtly political work of a r t that hadnoclose parallel in Offenbach’s satirical repertoire. He embarked on a series of studies and large oils devoted to the execution in june by juarez’s Mexican troops of France’s puppet, Emperor Maximilian. Since Maximilian’s fall mean t the end of Louis Napoleon’s ambitions for Mexico, it was a defeat and, to many, adisgrace, all the more crushing because ofthe boastful nature ofthe Paris fair. Manet projected amajor composition (P1. 63) on the theme and worked on it and its related studies through 1867 and 1868. Imperial censors would have thwarted any effort to show it in public, and Manet exhibited it only a decade later. He entertained more hopes for a lithograph of the composition, but in 1869 the gove r nmen t censor forbade its printing, an action publicly noted by Zola which confirmed the artist’s opposition to the Empire.9 Although Manet’s failures were in striking contrast to

Offenbach’s successes, there were nonetheless parallel changes in the direction their ar t took in 1867. For both artists, that year marked a definitive tu rn towards contemporary life. They no longer needed mythological or historical figures in order to commen t upon their society. Goddesses and gods had been useful earlier when imperial censorship successfully stifled opposition, which therefore had to find cove r t ways of manifesting itself. Censorship continued in 1867, but in order to placate growing opposition, Louis Napoleon had made a tu r n towards the Left, and anumber ofliberal measures were introduced which led to a re tu rn of more ove r t criticism.

Daumier’s cartoons, for example, became political again after 1867, following along period of relatively subdued views, and Henri Rochefort, ajournalist who had displayed little political consciousness before then, made such a success of his attacks on the Emperor that hehad to flee to Belgium (adecade later

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Manet painted a portrait of him, and a painting of r, from the prison of New Caledonia). 5 Neither Manet n o r Offenbach were overtly u

artists, but the more liberal mood of 1867 and after“, manifested in their work by a complete devotion to drawn from cu r ren t society. Their a r t seemed to liv‘ immediate present, to arise from aworld of artifice ~ by courtesans, actresses and actors, musicians, Write, ," mians, andfaslzionablcs. Their settings were freunntl, places, those theaters, dances, cafés, restaurants, cafés-c gardens, and parks, where their exquisite figures parad leisure as a way of rebuking bourgeois conventions greatness resides in par t in the genius with which th sistently undermined the hallowed conventions o f t 5. by pointing mocking fingers at the cloak of hypocrisy . over imperial society.

Bohemians, Marginals, and Performers Because Paris was itself a theater‐tourists and r e ; agreed, each treating the other ascharacters worthy o " stared a t ‐ i t is no wonder that artists devoted to contem. life treated Parisians asactors on their painted stages, ;_ Degas, and Renoir, the chief figure painters among t i ; pressionists, portrayed awide cross section ofthe city’s? lation, from street people to aristocrats. Of all these their sympathies were extended mo s t often to writers, pa ' journalists, courtesans, dandies, musicians, and perfo . that informal grouping of marginals for whom there blanket te rm unless we accept the vague one then curren Boheme.” Through their common interests and inters lives, these people formed alooselyjointed community So what apart from the res t of the population. They lacke relative stability of the bourgeoisie, from whom they their distance. . Renoir was legitimately amember of this bohemia, oz

the son o fa tailor, a slum dweller, a porcelain worker still aboy, and then aresident of Montmartre where hel‑ among that area’s assortment of shop assistants, r e s t a employees, laundresses, models, concierges, workers, and‘ formers. He frequently took his models from among th including several figures in his Moulin de[a Galette (Pl. 7’ and the young performers in Little Circus Girls of 1879 were daughters of the circus owner Fernando Wartenber Degas is a quite different case. He was from a banV»

family, but his misanthropy and the failed fortunes of family business in 1874 gave him asharp‐eyed and embitte distance from his o w n kind. His ballet dancers, ballet mast‑ laundresses, jockeys, journalists, musicians, cabaret per . mers, and milliners were all people who served or entertai 1 the well‐to‐do, so Degas did n o t have to desert his class' construct an a r t devoted to them. In them he found levels» professional skill that he admired and associated with his 0 ' . craft. We shall encounter them in future portions ofthis b00 As for Manet, hecame to public attention well beforeDC.

and Renoir, and it is his treatment of street bohemians a social marginals that we should first examine. Manet delib ately retained his place in high society, and from the C0 fidence this gave him, hemoved with aflrincur’s ( l l i f among ‘

1painting Ofhi 7 of pariSian SOciety. Throughout the 18605 and 18705Tm both studio and apartment in the Batignolles, the l'i 'u5t north of the Gare Saint-Lazare which was being ,.‘ Sively refashioned by Haussmann, aswe saw in Chapter ‘l NCW streets were being cut through old ones, and thet .of thC Batignolles, avillage annexed to the city in 1861, (“6 being leveled to permit the extensmn of the railroad and tracts and boulevards c o m i n g from the center. It embraced .' turC of costly new apartment buildings, empty lots, rail‑ I. tracks, warehouses, and remnants of the old Batignolles.. aSthere that Manet frequently crossed the paths of the

nerants, ragpiCkers, and gyp51es who became his models.-; have already m e t one of them o r , rather, amodeltreated .,such, in The Street Singer (P1. _38). In other paintings, w_ings, and etchings of the period, he pictured Paris’s ],- emians: The Absinthe Drinker of 1859; Gypsy with Cigarette fi'about 1862; The Old Musician (P1. 65); several kinds ofstreet

fitertainers, dancers, guitarists, c o u r t e s a n s , actresses and f, org, gypsies, and three paintings of beggar‐philosophers of mich Plate 64 is an example. Among his models were '.lardet, a ragpicker, janvier, a locksmith (who posed for 1:riSt, injesiis Marked by the Soldiers of 1865), and Lagrene, a

W)” _ . The marginals that Manet represented were much admired

y the generation of painters and writers he led in the 18605, a l i s t school with prominent leanings toward romanticism, a ndness for Spanish art , and touches of nascent Impression‑ m. Ragpickers were especially favored by the artists. They

15ere not the lowest of the working class, but self-employed fuen and women who formed aguild that regulatedthe gather‑ . . g of urban detritus. They had their o w n clubs in Paris and ”1e near suburbs; one of the best known, near the Pantheon, j. asdevoted to communal drinking of absinthe. Manet, like Baudelaire, associated them with the tradition of the beggar‑ ahilosopher, a well‐established Parisian type whose gradual disappearance, owing to Haussmann’s transformations and police repression, was cause for grievance. The ragpicker was faliberated spirit who moved about atnight, flouting the habits of the bourgeoisie in their comfortable beds; he was despised by society (a piece of irony, since he was an entrepreneur), therefore an outcast, but this freed him from society’s restric‑

‘tive conventions; he gathered up discarded scraps from the . City. just aswriters and painters chose bits and pieces of urban . life‐commonplace realities, n o t the ideal elements sanctioned , by academics‐with which to create their works“) Further,

rilgpickers had self‐esteem (Manet’s old man, Pl. 64, has an almost defiant bearing) and were proud of their opposition to a government whose agents constantly harried them. These

' yvere all comforting parallels for avantgarde artists who were 1m Psychological if n o t social opposition to the mainstream. ‘ Manet’s principal homage to street bohemians is his huge f Pfilnting of 1862, The Old Musician (Pl. 65). The model for the aViolinist was the gypsy jean Lagrene, an elder of the Parisian i, gYPSY colony who lived n o t far from Manet’s studio in a

tcInporary encampment, harrassed by the police.” He had -earlier hurt his arm while a construction worker on Hauss‑ ' mann's projects and thereafter made his living principally as anOrgan grinder and artists’ model. Behind him in Manet’s PICture, seated on the embankment, the ragpicker Colardet

are overtly “p.‑ 367 and afterwa«i te devotion to A : seemed to l i vrldofartifice, .. iSiCians, writers were frequently; aurants, cafes‐co te figures parade ) l S conventions. I with which the nventions of th k of hypocrisy t,

"formers :ourists and re "1 cters worthy o f ‑ roted to contemr Jainted stages. 1. inters among th i o n of the city’s oi ;. Of all these p ento writers, pa'1. ians, and perforr or whom there a» : one then curren arests and inters. ted community Se t i o n . They lacke‑ om whom they:

fthis bohemia, v )rcelain worker '. na r t re where he . assistants, resta’t

ges, workers, and, s from among t le la Galette (Pl. _ us Girls of 1879 iando Wartenber was from 3 ba 8 ailed fortunes of . t‐eyed and enibitt iiicers, ballet mast i a n s , cabaret per served or enterta' to desert his clas -m he found level ociated with his 0 iortions ofthis boo on well before De Ltreet bohemians A mine. Manet delib . and from the C" ineur’s chic among 53

64. Manet , The Ragpicleer, 1869. Norton Simon Foundation.

reappears. Manet has reproduced him from his Absinthe Drinker, that scandalous composition redolent of Baudelaire’s world, rejected by the Salonjury in 1859. On the right edge is a key personage of mid-century realism, the wandering Jew. Opposite him is ayoung girl holding ababy; from other evi‑ dence the model is known to have been a slum child from Petite Pologne, the section of the Batignolles where Manet had located his studio in 1861. Next to her are t w o children in unconventional costume. The one nearest the old man looks asthough he might have stepped o u t of aSpanish painting of a beggar boy. The other, dressed in white asGilles or Pierrot, invokes the itinerant troupes of performers who often stayed in Petite Pologne. The constant excavations there left vacant lots and upturned yellowish earth, so the setting of this painting, indefinite though it is, seems appropriate to this gathering:

So one fine day the hamlet became a village, the village a borough, and the borough a city; but a dirty city, with n a r r o w, airless streets, without t rees , without squares,

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65. Manet, The Old Musician, 1862. Washington, National Gallery.

formed by deposits of plaster and limestone that have been left to accumulate without care. . . .12

Unlike The Street Singer (P1. 38), which also sprang from this arena of demolition, The OldMusician does n o t encourage a clear explanation of what is going on. It is true, five figures form a symmetrical half‐circle around the musician, while his gaze outwards and his pizzicato invite us to complete the circle. Yet the fiction ofa group in attendance upon a roadside fiddler is n o t easily sustained in terms of traditional painting. The figures are arbitrarily clothed and placed asthough they had walked on from different dressing rooms. Only t w o of them look directly at the musician; the others gaze abstractedly elsewhere. How, then, can we reconcile the disparate features of this curious composition? The strongest bond that joins Manet’s painted figures is

their common origin among the street bohemians. And they

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are more than mere motifs. Manet n o t only painted the chose to work among them in Petite Pologne (after fl‘ could have found a studio elsewherel). Like Daumier 'r: him, and Picasso afterwards, heassociated himselfw i t h and performers on the fringes of society (the violinist IS?" a surrogate for the painter, and a flattering one since the a, revolve around him). Their uprootedness was parti “ appropriate to the northern edge of Paris in 1862. It wasf halfdestroyed and half‐rebuilt by “progressive” forces thrived on itinerant labor‐Lagrene is acase in p0 in t ‐ ‐ ' the altered land values of these transformed districts, 5 which “insalubrious streets” and unwanted people were i removed.13By n o t observing all the conventions of psy i gical unity among his figures, by using broad strokes Oflf‘ which fail to model form with customary subtlety, " himself uprooted tradition in the very way he compOS picture.

are is consistency, therefore, in Manet’s choice of subject . 6 way he built 1115 pictures. The transformations that Napoleon, Haussmannand the “mushroom aristocracy’

' imposmg on Paris went'more deeply than they knew ouChed on the underpinnings of soc1al_ structure and on

bstructures of art . Manet, an opposmonal Republican, ber of an artistic vanguard, sought ou t the symbols of

TY, uncertainty and transformation, and conveyed them ,orthodox forms. One of the hidden. costs of Second i r e progress was the loss of the old ver1t1es of i m a g e and ‘i. in art- . . . . 6 5 , yes, but there are knowmg references to tradition in ;01d Musician, and they help unify it. There is a heavy

__ish” touch throughout in both image and rendering. ”broadly painted earth tones recall Velasquez and other ts of the seventeenth century. The dark costumed boy, as a w , looks like a citation from Spanish art , and the whole Jgement has echoes of The Drinkers, a composmon by r; quez which Manet had copied.14 The fact that the figures .,. to beplucked from art history also unifies them. Despite {t topicality, they appear assomany costumed players in a (' ess piece of art from which specific moment and place ,~beenremoved. They are part way betweenthe Batignolles “ ‘a r t , ” part way between reality in 1862 and timeless on. This dialectic was essential to Manet early in his career, ' he was attempting to free himself from tradition. The

.entions of art that he was rebelling against were in fact -; ‘fied by his consciousness of contemporary Paris and of fig models. Colardet and Lagrene were real people. It is as ugh the painted images of Spanish and of romantic ar t 3:9 come to life in the Batignolles asManet walked about. Jcarried with him memories of paintings and these acted, fin ps unwittingly, asguides when hechose his models. By esting traditional images with the vitality of livingParisians, 5 , t h in his new manner, he gave energy to old forms. The sf t was a meeting of past and present, past in the forms of "f-r art n o w revitalized, present in his cast of bohemians, vi edup, asit were, by the art , which blanks o u t most of the , bing features of the present by omitting overt signs of

t e s t , misery, even of sentiment. l. anet’s paintings of the 18605 often have this mixture of "f and present both in style and in imagery. The De’jeuner sur ' be (Pl. 171) and Olympia (P1. 62) converted renaissance A. l n t o picnickers and cour tesans, and stirred con t roversy ”reuse they were neither historicalnor modern figures. Over li}course of the decade, he gradually shed more and more [fences to the past, but i t was n o t until the 18703, after the “Lent end of the tinsel empire in the Franco‐Prussian War "?_the Commune, that he made a thorough break with his‑ a , and committed himselfwholeheartedly to new-wrought "m as the expression of contemporary life. l. s o w n life in the 18605 reveals the position of an artist 1015 of the upper class, yet partly displaced from it. He ‘}_ d remain anelegant member of high society, enjoying the ' Party of amonied and cultured élite, and yet move among CRY} marginals. In that, hewas like otherflfineurs who had

eitinerants, street entertainers andbohemians into favored {CCts since the 18405. Along with Baudelaire, Duranty and GOncourt brothers, Manet was amember of afashionable

y painted them logne (after all, ke Daumier be himselfwith a at 16violinist is s it one since the otn is Was particul 11862. It was b“) ssive” forces w ‘‑ ie in point‐and 16d districts, fr -People were b i ations of psychol iad strokes o f p r “Ysubtlety, M . “ Yhe composed i

artistic society; like them, he encountered street bohemians in real life and then inserted them into his ar t , that special realm where fiction and reality mingle in disconcerting ways.

Café and Brasserie The café was the tangible meeting place of Parisian society, the place where the social day began for some, on their way to work, the place where the more fashionable people ended their day, at 2 or 3 a m . Edward King, in his impressions of Paris published ayear after the fair of 1867, insisted that “The huge Paris world centres twice, thrice daily; it is at the café; it gossips at the café; it intrigues at the café; it plots, it dreams, it suffers, it hopes, at the cafe’.”15 Native Parisians agreed, and supplied the reasons. Alfred Delvau said that Parisians thrived on publicity, on “the street, the cabaret, the café, the restau‑ r an t , in order to show ourselves in good moments or bad, to chat, to be happy or unhappy, to satisfy all the needs of ou r vanity or ou r intellect, to laugh or to cry. ” 1 6 Parisians, in other words, elevated public life over the private, and for this they needed public spaces.

The café was an ideal social place because (to recall Georg Simmel’s terms) it providedasolution to the problem of near‑ ness and remoteness. The frustration of being constantly with j strangers is mitigated because the café permits close proxi‐ ' mity without prior acquaintance. Cafés are anaccommodation to one’s experience of society: one meets others in a place that offers parallels of private life‐eating, drinking, rest ing ‑ while it shelters these actions under the overarching social , relationship. For a city marked by foreigners and recent arri‑ vals, the neutral terrain of the café was especially valuable.

In cafes, natives and adoptive Parisians were able to observe 1 life while displaying themselves asworthy performers in the l spectacle of the capital’s culture. For the writer‐fldneur Delvau and the painter‐fldneur Manet, the café was a source of art . There they reconnoitred their subjects and took advantage of fellow wits to hone the edges of their observations. By appearing in the right cafés, they added to their reputations , as clever commentators and this, t o o , eventually gave them , a helpful cachet among the cultured élite who were their associates and clients. In the 1860s Manet held forth at the Café Guerbois (in what is n o w the avenue de Clichy) in the company of Degas, Monet , Zola, Duranty, Zacharie Astruc, and others friendly to his causes. After the C o m m u n e , when he switched allegiance to the Nouvelle Athenes on the place Pigalle, a number of journalists and writers followed there, aswell asMone t , Degas, Renoir, and, occasionally, Pissarro. Before we examine several paintings of the cafe, we mus t look briefly into the history of this lively institution.

Coffee reached Western Europe in the third quarter of the , seventeenth century, brought by mariners who had acquired a ' taste for it in the Near East. It was first established in seaports, but spread rapidly to major cities inland. Considered a dan‑ gerous stimulant, it was closely monitored by municipal and royal authorities who licensed and taxed its use. They also worried about its association with those citizens who made the new coffee houses into social and political gathering places. Already in 1675, Charles II of England tried to close down ; the coffee houses asplaces of sedition (popular pressure made

him desist, however), and for the nex t t w o centuries they were frequently subjected to gove rnmen t surveillance and suppression. In Paris, as elsewhere in Europe, coffee was served in

restaurants (at first in specially designated sections) and in taverns, as well as in the new coffee houses. By the middle of the eighteenth century the cafe‐tavern and cafe‐restaurant were firmly embedded in Parisian social habits (Voltaire’s favored Cafe’ Procope is still pointed o u t to tourists). Over the nex t hundred years they increased in both numbers and variety, covering the whole range, from dark, working‐class establishments to brilliant, mirror‐clad interiors along the mo s t expensive boulevards. Because tobacco and alcohol, t w o more well‐taxed commodities, were consumed in the cafés, and

66. Manet, Woman Reading in a Cafe, 1879. Art Institute of Chicago. ” u p 1 1 --| 5 . , <

«v' " i n .-" fi'» “ iv i n ! f ”ill

because anumber of them became singing clubs, where could one find more logical places for police spies to thrive? Coffee, tobacco, alcohol,’ and song were regarded as attributes of political opposition, so one of Louis Napoleon’s first decrees (29 December 1851) pu t cafés under direct governmental authority and placed anoutright ban on group singing in cafe’s; thousands were closed down early in his reign.1 Despitepolice surveillance, cafés generally prospered during

the Second Empire. They took on new forms that are fami‑ liar to us from the lives of famous writers and impressionist painters. Cafes and restaurants n o w pushed o u t o n t o the city’s

66

sidewalks, encouraged by l‐Iaussmann’s wider pavcmen were successful enough for their owners to be Ulldisma». the rental fees that they were obliged to pour into In coffers. For Paris of the 18605 and 18705, Characteri longer by nar row streets but by wide avenues and s.) walkways, the sidewalk café was the perfect amenity, meals at all hours, it catered to the client who only w beer or a coffee, and it provided a front seat for the th the streets. With both interior spaces and outdoor te R, was an irresistible lure for shoppers, tourists, and tho worked nearby. In 1876, Henry james marveled that -t"~ the evening o u t of doors in Paris one was n o t obliged tr‑ stoop or curb, asin New York, but could insteadChoos at one ofthe sidewalk cafés: “The boulevards are alon of cafés, each one with its little promontory of tables projecting into the sea of asphalt.”18 Thanks to i mann’s vas t extension of gaslight, which facilitiated ni shopping, the sidewalk cafés enjoyed evening hours a (, tributed to the sights and sounds of the nocturnal pro , We have seen one such cafe already, in Degas’s Wom Café Terrace, Evening (P1. 47). By Degas’s and Manet’s day, many of these empo '

called “brasseries,” since they featured beer (the term-o» from copper brewing vats). Beer had n o t been a p r o ' drink in Paris before 1848, for Parisians associated i; peasants and small‐town folk. This became a positivei however, when enthusiasm for the common man de , in the wake of the revolution of 1848. The provinci flocked to Paris in the Second Empire brought with the: taste for beer, and so did the greatly increased nu ni‑ foreign visitors, especially those from the Lowlands,Ger and Great Britain. Many traditionalists lamented the w o n prominence of beer, considered a provincial and‑ habit when compared to wine. Marc Constantin was t. these, and in 1872, in the last sentence ofhis history of n heexpressed the hope that the brasserie would disappe' no longer in the capital of the civilized world will weI ignoble beer mug replacing the divine wine bottle.”19

date is the beer which he featured in several ofhis café p (Pls. 66, 70 , 77, 78). They attest to his whole‐hearted‘ into contemporary Parisian society (consider that Betw bode beers was the title ofa topical review in 1877)?“ of the previous decade like The Old Musician (P1. 65) an; Ragpicleer (P1. 64), with their earthy tones and posed .‘:. belong asmuch to the mid‐century asto Impressionist‑ t r ue that Manet’s later café pictures are also posed, th were indeed painted in the studio, and that they h a v forebears among the taverns and cafes of seventeenth‐ . painting. Al l ofthis is'well disguised, however, and th the appearance of freshly observed works. It is this im which rewards examination. ‘ 5

Woman Reading in a Cafe (Pl. 66) is the sketchlw simplest of Manet’s cafe pictures, but no less revea 3 that. The beer mug is the emblem of the brasserie, ~ foliage beyond suggests one ofthose cafés that had a " terrace or courtyard (compare P1. 67). The woman ism ' dress, and holds in her gloved hands anillustratedjOu baton, the kind one takes from a rack in the cafe’. SuC

X. avenues fa, rfect a ine é znt who on t seat for f” and Outdoo Jurists, 3m: marveled t: a sn o t 0b] 4 ’ 1dinstead GE. evards are: a nontory 0, , FMS Tha (1 hfacilitiate vening hou‑ nocturnalof F1Degas’s i";

of these e ' beer (the n o t been ans associat‑ rame a posii. nmon ma The pro all

ought wit if increased in

3Lowlandssi' ; lamentedj provincial . fly fonstantin

vine bottle.” gn of his be i ral of his cal whole‐heart ; ider that Bern ' in 1877).2°4-? itian (P1. 65 , es and pOSCol ' Impressio i; also posed, 51 that they hay ~seventeen '_ wever, and ”ll . It is thisi g

; the sketc 7“ 1 0 less r e v e ‘ le brasserie, e s that had a‘ 1 e woman is u

the café. Sut;

id grown mightily in the 18605 and 18705, and they are if attached to Impressionism.21 They publishedflarienrs’ " t s of current life, articles and advertisements devoted ‘1 test fashions, and illustrations and caricatures whose g‘ 21and whose very form‐quick and summary‐have ” u s parallels with the painters’ art. Dominated by'pic‑ _ they could be quickly skimmed, unlike traditional

uS” journals with their wordy pages. A few of Manet s f 5 were reproduced in one of these Journals, La Vie

e, and several ofthe impreSSionists showed works in the | tion rooms attached to the grand boulevard offices of this i ' y review, founded in 1879 by RenOir s patrons, the L, ' ”3 Woman Reading in a Café was one of severalenthrS-~ . . .

Manet showed there in 1880. Because Journalists and

painters m e t in cafés, and because some reviews were virtually edited in cafés (a few were actually published by such cafés‑ concerts asthe Divan japonais), Manet’s picture is a veritable homage to his o w n circle.

This homage is n o t limited to the picture’s content , for his painterly shorthand is equally calculated to stir his friends’ admiration. His bravura declares his intention of getting away with asshowy a treatment aspossible. Against the dark tones of the woman’s hat and clothing (the composition’s anchor) he plays the wavy flashes of grey and blueish white of her tulle collar, the crab-like curves of her t a n gloves, and the rectilinear streaks of the journal, composed of delicate greys formed of lavender, blue and other tones mixed with white. The picture on the cover of the journal and the foliage to the rear are so

indistinct that they have aprecarious fictional life, mo r e color and brushwork than image. All this tentativeness suits the sub‑ ject admirably. It is asmall occasion, but one that is perfectly typical ofthi's glittering city, simply anelegant woman’s pause for a beer and a glance at a journal. Chez le Pere Lathuille (P1. 67) is a larger and mo r e c om ‑

plicated picture. After years of confronting offlcal a r t circles Manet was n o w somewhat less of an enfant terrible, and his canvas was accepted for the official Salon of 1880. The greens and reds of foliage are about asindistinct as those of Woman Reading in a Cafe, but here they are massed in suitable areas and hence are mo r e easily read. Manet places us in the garden terrace o f a famous cafe-restaurant in the Batignolles district, n o t far from the Cafe’ Guerbois and the Nouvelle Athenes. Pere Lathuille was already well known at the beginning of the century; it appears in the background of Horace Vernet’s

H” “" .

68. An Arbor at Pére Lathuille, 1852.

painting of 1820, The Battle of Clichy. In 1852, the restau ‑ r a n t was illustrated in Edmond Texier’s Tableau deParis (Pl. 68), where it represented the pleasures of an excursion to, a “guinguette,” a freer, countrified place beyond the city’s limits. In 1862, when Manet painted The Old Musician (P1. 65), this region hadjust been annexed and was undergoing its Haussmannization. By 1879, broad streets and commercial prosperity ran over its leveled hills and through its demolished village streets. Manet continued to favor the Batignolles and his painting preserves something of the old traditions: the illustration in Texier’s book shows ayoung woman on the lap o fa man, in the midst o fa wine‐drinking party (the “divine wine bottle” still had pride of place in 1853!), arched over by a bower of foliage. The pair in Clzez le Pere Lathuille have been described as

“lovers,”23 but this is n o t so. Manet’s vignette of Batignolles life is more subtle than that, and careful observation discloses the particular adventure that is taking placehere on the edge of the city. The waiter is holding a coffee urn , doubtless wondering if it is time to serve coffee to this table. He would wish to do so, because the woman i s his last cus t ome r ‐a t least the tables beyond the glass partition are empty. Of course, he would serve coffee only at the end ofthe meal. On the table, in effect, we see the last course. The woman holds a broad‑

68

bladed fruit knife in her right hand, and on the Plate her hands is a rounded fruit. The waiter is therefore nu." should soon finish her fruit and be ready for COffee ° we have noticed that there is only one place set° man has none. The wine glass he touches is n o t his ll woman’s, white wine to go with her fruit. HQ {011.5 glass, the familiar gesture by which a man encroach woman’s terrain. His right a rm rests on the back t h e another territorial manoeuvre. As for her, She has forward and avoids his touch, her back very erect_ I her whole body is proper and stiff, her gloved arms fo sphinx‐like rectitude. Will she succumb to his blandishg. The fact is that the young man did n o t Come t

restaurant with her. No t only does he lack a meal, he chair. Unless we were to grant him peculiar simian prep .,

. ‘land a stool, we have to conclude that he15squatting

69. A. van Ostade, Peasant Couple, 1653. London, National Gallery. 1

n e x t to her. In the American vernacular, he is putting the m. on her. She is awell‐got‐up woman dining alone, and hei young artist or fashionable bohemian on the lookout fO conquest. The model was Louis Gauthier-Lathuille, the son the proprietor of Pere Lathuille whom Manet encounter while he was on military leave, and whom hefirst painted uniform.24 Manet then thought better o fi t and gave him h. o w n artist’s smock. The woman was first posed by the actre Ellen Andre'e, and then by Judith French, a cousin of Offel

_ _ _ ‐ ‐ ‑

m the plate behf; ; therefbrc r igh for coffee By ' 3 place Settirh;1 sis n o t his, i t " uit. l‐Ie fondl an enCrOQChes m [6 back of her ch ier’ She has let: ' e r y erect. In ”l led arms {OYWa his blandishm‑ n o t Corne t o , “ <a meal, he la" y. simian Propo ‘h

Jational Gallery.

putting the ma r_ alone, and he is 1,‑ ie lookout for ihuille, the son oi met encoun te r c refirst painted ir ind gave him hi led by the ac t res Sousin of Offen

"' Mallt‘t, At the Café, 1878, Winterthur, Oskar Reinhart Collection.

ach. The composition is consequently anartful concoct ion in chich Manet used familiar Parisians to create one of the many counters between strangers that people his art._ Cont-cip‑

1'Wary novels and operettas are rich in Similar cases in whic ha blounger man seeks the favors of an older woman whom. e l' 015 alone in café or theater. Wedo no t , therefore, deal With i10vers,” but with amore equivocal relationship that charac‑ ' rizes urban encounters. ' The subtlety of Manet’s conception becomes apparent when

his picture is put alongside one by Ostade (P1. 69) that Show}: a peasant couple, evidently abrothel scene. The chances are t af Manet was consciously restating in modern terms.the then?lo courtship and seduction found in many Dutchpaintings o t e seventeenth century. In the Ostade, the woman is bei’nghcozll enough to hold back a little, but she permits the man s an to lie atop hers, and we do n o t really doubt the outflome. Besides, the man is larger than she.and dominatesher, w ereas Manet’s young man is in the pos1tion of a supplicant.

4and was equally subtle when hedealt with another kind 1elationShip in At the Café (Pl. 70). Here we are indoors in a roughly urban setting, n o t in aguinguette. A man is cu t off 6 left, awaitress bends over behind him, and awoman’s

flzdish‐bfown hat shows over her shoulder: fragments of owded interior. A young bourgeoise (posed by Ellen

.drée) looks over at us with an ambiguous, p0551bly be‑ 4.sed expression. Her right hand touchesthe back of the it turned towards us, a gesture we can interpret as pro‑ , ing it against another’s use o r , alternatively, asa delicate f»itation to come and sit. In front of her is apartly quaffed an of lager, in connubial propinquity with abock beer. That u s t beher husband nex t to her, because his forearm is lean‑ onher shoulder. Yes, it is definitely her husband (posed

( the engraver Henri Guérard), because the hand that is pportedby her shoulder is tapping the stick against the edge , the table, to emphasize what he is saying. His half‐open .outhshows that heis apostrophizing the air, ashusbands are ml: to do; his left hand, thrust into his coat, completes the rator’s pose. Given this, his wife looks at us asmuch asto y; “Isn’t that just like ahusband, prattling away and nobody ftening!” Surely the girl to the right is n o t listening (P1. 71)? She

{ts with gloved hands perched on the edge of the table, as tached from the others asthe lid of a canopic u r n from its

f, Renoir, The Little Café, c. 1877. Otterlo, RijksmuseumKroller‐Miiller.

' - Manet, detail of At the Café (Pl. 70).

n. ‑.... n.. ,. " J ‘ ‑

73. Renoir, The End of the Lunch, 1879. Frankfurt, Stadelsches Kunstin‑ stitut.

body. Her rather large head is in rigid profile and set against the window as though in a separate frame. She is probably the child of the central couple, at least it is easier to assume sothan to believe she came alone. Like many adolescents, she is with her parents, yet n o t with them. The backward letters of the poster behind the lace curtain, like those of the cubist pictures that this painting looks forward t o , seem to hint of things that separate o u t from their customary unity. They help pull the girl away from her parents towards the outside, as though they could voice the unstated thoughts of her mind. Given his fldneur’s detachment, Manet does n o t interpose

his own ideas, but in fact hehas shrewdly placed in front of us a w r y commentary upon marriage and the bourgeois family. The three figures are side by side, and yet in separate psy‑ chological worlds. This is surely adelicate prying at the bonds that are supposed to unite them, but a prying nonetheless. Manet is the alert observer of new urban truths; he usually abstains from showing us loving couples or families. The opposite view is taken by Renoir, whose café pictures

remain faithful to his insistence upon a perfect human and social harmony. In the tiny picture appropriately called The Little Café (P1. 72), heplaces t w o beautiful young women at a table between t w o admiring men. It seems like one of the casual encounters fostered by the Parisian café. The man on the left is at a nearby table and merely looks over at the women. The other man leans on the table, fists bent under,

71

while talking with them. This is perhaps the beginning of a foursome but Renoir, also a naturalist, leaves it at that. We face amore confirmed grouping in The Endofthe Lunch

(Pl. 73). In the garden ofa Montmartre cafe25 awoman (posed by the ubiquitous Ellen Andree) holds her liqueur glass and gazes at her dinner companion as he lights a cigarette. An acquaintance has come over and joins the seated woman in admiring the man. And “admiring” is the right word. Although the man fills in only anar row angle ofthe canvas, he anchors the triangle of human heads. The women dominate the composition and are to be esteemed for their beauty, but they are there to serve male interest. Renoir’s conservatism shows in another way: in each of his pictures, unlike Manet’s At the Cafe, the figures on the edges of the composition face inwards to establish an old‐fashioned pictorial balance. Unlike Manet, therefore, Renoir recreated in painting the

loving, male‐oriented relationships that he aspired to, for himself and for society. His letters, his essays, and the aphorisms that his son published26 disclose his fears of modern industrial society with its forces for disintegration, and show his determination to express ideals of social accord by way of craftmanship placed at the service of beauty. In many ways admirable, this outlook lacks the penetration of Manet, for whom the café was amicrocosm ofurban truths that had to be stared in the face.

Brandy andAbsinthe With Manet’s The Plum (Pl. 75), we shift from the wry amuse‑ me n t of Chez lePére Lathuille and At the Cafe’ to apicture that has a more perceptible emotional edge. A young woman, neatly though n o t elegantly dressed, sits at acafé table. In front of her is the brandy plum of the title, long aParisian specialty, and in her left handshe holds anunlit cigarette. Her other hand supports her head in the traditional gesture of pensiveness, helping create amood far from the celebratory one of Renoir’s Endofthe Lunch. Isshe waiting for someone to give her alight? We notice also that she has no spoon. Perhaps she is reflecting for a m om e n t while awaiting the spoon? Manet’s anecdote may be no more complicated than that. He may have stored up areal observation of the so r t and subsequently made it the basis of his picture. However, the effect of pensiveness, tingedwithmelancholy,

that emanates from this painting cannot beexplained by unlit cigarette and unspooned plum. There is much more here, for despite Manet’s detachment, despite his figure’s expression‑ less face, a sense of aloneness pervades our experience of the painting. We are caught in Georg Simmel’s dilemma of near‑ ness and remoteness as we t ry to sor t ou t o u r feelings. The angle of the table tells us that we are either standing or seated near this stranger; because we see underneath the table, we find that we are close enough to sense a slight discomfort. Nevertheless, we are n o t able to make psychological contact with the woman, hence our conclusion that she is n o t just alone, but lonely. She is one of the many figures by Manet or by Degas who, regardless of the absence of emotional display, convince us of the poignancy of contact with urban strangers: Manet’s Street Singer (P1. 38), Degas’s Woman with Chrysanthe‑ mums (P1. 59) and The Loge (P1. 60).

72

The devices Manet uses to work on our percepti clever despite their apparent innocence. The bare t a b ] trast it with Renoir’s‐denies the woman any COmfo because it floats, supported only by one iron leg, it , element of tentativeness. Its forceful effect becom evident when we compare it to the draped table in 1), Restaurant le Doyen (Pl. 74) by his friend Ernest Ange t, Duez’s table is an important prop on his busy Stage, 7: actual rendering does n o t take on a vital role. He has~ all t o o much. We are supposed to be concerned abo lone woman, but she is hardly by herself. Eleven 01, accompany her, including the men to the right whose I told curiosity spoils what chances the painting mig 7, had. Manet is much more the picture‐maker than D , stead of giving a stage to his figure, he hems her in a network of rectangles which compress the space and c, sensation of confinement. Her head is further boundem repetition of the picture’s frame in the gold casing aroi metal grill behind her.28 ‘

wan . _ nt le Doyen, 1878. Collection unkno ’74. Duez, Paris, Au Restaura

To many modern observers, Manet’s figure r e p r specific type, namelyaprostitute.29This isanassumptior on the fact that contemporaries frequently refer to p ro seated alone in a cafe, looking for a'client. Manet repr high-class courtesans, it is t rue (Nana, Pl. 116), an encountered prostitutes among the street bohemians h so well. It is also true that the woman’s cigarette mar ‘ a liberated spirit, since “respectable” women refrain smoking alone in cafés. However, her costume is n o t 5 cruising prostitute (compareher with Degas’s Women 0' Terrace, Evening, P1. 47) and is of the kind worn ' attendants, milliners’ apprentices, or florists, you“' women who did smoke in public. Some of these 'r underpaid and frequently o u t of work, were obliged to occasional prostitution, but their exteriors would 119C to reveal this. Manet has avoided the conventional Sl. prostitute (provocative costume, pose, gesture, or g lan

n our perceptio The bare tabl- 5 man any COmfo ie iron leg, it ié. effect becomes. .ped table in Pa' 1Ernest Ange .' 1is busy stage, 5; 11role. He has tQ concerned abo I rself. Eleven , e right Whose ct. painting might naker than Du». 3hems her in by,

[rther bounded .\, old casing arou:

Iollection unknown

; figure represe

y refer to prosti ,: t. Manet represen Pl. 116), and s bohemians he r» igarette marks he >men refrained f r :tume is n o t that" ‘as’s Women ona 5 kind wo r n by s- ‘ lorists, young f‑

re obliged to tu "5would n o t 51155 [vent ional signs 0‘ ture, or glance),

National Gallery.

all that we can besure ofis that we face one ofthe many single w om e n who staffed Parisian commerce, one of those whose aspirations to glorious careers were so frequently checked by reality. A momentary check, a pause in life, a bit ofloneliness, this

is the mood that Manet creates. H ow different is the down‑ and‐out w oma n in Degas’s Absinthe (P1. 76)! Shoulders slum‑ ped, eyes cast down, feet splayed out , her cos tume frowzy, she is the café habituée rooted to her seat, without aspirations. She will derive little comfort from the man n e x t to her, the kind of elbow-leaner who will remain there for hours, even ‑ tually shuffling o f f to an uncertain destination. This is one of Degas’s mo s t devastating images of public life. The drink in front of the w oma n is readily identified asabsinthe, thanks to its pale, greenish color and the nearby carafe of wa te r. As for the man’s drink, it was recognized by the Scottish owner ofthe picture, familiar with Paris, asa“mazagran,” cold black coffee and seltzer wa te r in a glass.30 A mazagran commonly served asahangover remedy, and, since absinthe was taken by its votaries at all hours, we are entitled to View the scene as taking place in the morning. This suits the grey light which floods in through the lace‐curtain windows reflected in the mirror behind the pair. Whether early morning or later in the day, the scene deserves the phrase used by Walter Crane when he saw it in 1893, “a study of human degradation, male and female.”31 The French did n o t regard absinthe at all like the “hygienic

beverages” (wine and beer) that we have seen in Manet’s and Renoir’s paintings. The assumption of its addictive and dan‑ gerous qualities may have contributed to the Salon jury’s rejection of Manet’s Absinthe Drinker of 1859 (the one whose figure returned three years later in The Old Musician, P1. 65). “For this is a terrible and frightening drink, this absinthe,” w r o t e Alfred Delvau in 1862 (and he was no prude): The drunkenness it gives doesn’t resemble any known drunkenness. It is n o t the heavy drunkenness of beer, the fierce drunkenness of brandy, the jovial drunkenness of wine. No , it makes you lose your footing right away. . . . I t sticks immense wings on your shoulders and you leave for a country without horizon and without frontier, but also, without poetry and without sun. You think you are headed towards infinity, like all great dreamers, and you are only headed towards incoherence. . . .32 Absinthe had beenaworking-class drink at the beginningof

the nineteenth century, but with the advent of the Second Empire it suddenly took on immense popularity. Like beer, it rode the crest of the ever‐wider wave of alcohol that flowed through the expanding population of the capital. Entrepre‑ neurs took over the original recipes, putting in only a trace of wormwood (the supposedly dangerous, Baudelairean ingre‑ dient that was its attraction) or none at all, adding hyssop, mint, and anise for color and flavor. It was the perfect example of Second Empire capitalism, amass‐produced, commercial, and rather fraudulent concoction taken over from le peuple, creating money for its suppliers and for café proprietors, while inducing both gaiety and despair in its users. By the end of the century its consumption by volume (130,000 hectoliters) far exceeded that of all liqueurs combined (82,000 hectoliters).

74

When Marie Corelli published a novel in 1890 that 1, Parisian Vice and decadence, she chose Wormwood fo , certain that the notoriety of the drink would beani " signal of her theme. , As for Degas’s painting, it was done atatime when),

was a favorite target of France’s temperance m 0 v cm thermore, Degas placed it in front ofa woman, and drinking had become a volatile subject by 1876, Sev earlier, the Go'ncourt brothers had published Germin“ tenx, a novel which horrified many because it Chro ' decline ofa Parisian maid into alcoholism. Then, in t ' .

.b’

a scandalous novel which told of a laundress’s slimy alcoholism; it dealt also with working‐class drinking prostitution (Nana, the laundress’s daughter). Mg, working‐class drinking had been roundly attacked s"., because it was convenient for the conservatives who‘ the temperance m o v em e n t to believe that the horro Commune were due in part to excessive drink a m o n ‘ workers. These included the fabledpétroleuses, wome of setting the fires that had ravaged the city. The co A'. were called “apostles of absinthe,”33 and in the earl broad campaign was launched against public dru f!‑ One of Zola’s grandest efforts was to expose this ca l ahypocritical attempt to control working‐class cabare leaving untouched the drinking that w e n t on in _z, places. _ ‑ Degas’s painting, therefore, joined the naturalis

ledby Zola and the Goncourts. And like his literary a, he presented his ugly story with apparent detachme r while using his a r t to engage o u r emotions. It is hi construction of space that draws us into his picture . a; tually obliges us to address his issue (the perfect . exposes the issue but refuses to take a stand). Unlike D) 74), who creates the familiar stage in front of whic 3 walk back and forth, Degas fashions a space which o u r involvement. In the foreground is a table with" container and a newspaper on a baton. A folded forms a bridge to the nex t table, beyond which we1‘ sodden pair. They show no interest in reading, n o t i other. As for us, we realize we have to be seated be ‘ foreground table and are therefore near that couple, 5 them, although psychologically remote from them. " front them with peculiar directness, because ou r ey ove r the table tops, a passage made the swifter becau, omitted all supports for them (careful examinatio' original shows no hint of table legs). By making th. tops hover in mid‐air (the contrast with Duez is strisi placing his t w o figures on the far side ofa spatial h o l forcing us into close participation, he has created a5 space, anunstable and tentative one. His detachmentf clever facade: hehas manipulateduswith the devices ' Once we allow ourselves to play Degas’s v i s u

we are caught between fiction and reality (for our 0? chological reactions are real). So, too, was Degas, 5 who constantly made ar t o u t of his surroundings . signed his name, that of the artist‐reporter, along t' the newspaper in his picture. Degas’s actual models " suspended somewhere between image and real life. \

l in 1890 that at Wormwood for i \ would be an imm.

ata time when abl, t rance movement woman, and W0! t by 1876. Seven blished Germim’e l cause it chronicl zation of L’Asso it aundress’s slidino :lass drinking an. daughter). M o r i ly attacked sine._ ervatives who Stu: that the horrors o;

city. The comm r nd in the early I

xpose this campai" ig‐class cabarets, _\ w e n t o n i n high

the naturalist i;

ant detachment, ‘ itions. It is his c g 3 his picture and f‘ (the perfect cym and). UnlikeDu1 Front of which Wi l space which req 1a table with a at .. A folded news» >nd which we fi '6 feading, no r in 0 K ) be seated behind that couple, sta ' 3from them. W“ ecause ou r eye ‘7 swifter because 9‘ 11examination 0' 3y making the 1Duez isstrikin fa spatial hole, . v has created a dy ‘ isdetachment is o h the devices of ' Degas’s visual 14} lity (for o u r own was Degas, thef’ urroundings and» ir ter, along the :tual models w e t and real life. Th

the now‐familiar actress and model Ellen Andrée and the bohemian artist Marcellin Desboutin. Both were in the im ‑ pressionists’ orbit, friends of Zola and Duranty aswell as of the painters. Manet had painted Desboutin in 1875 as the bohemian artist, and he and Renoir painted Andrée asa res‑ pectable café client (Pls. 67, 70, 73). Since they frequented the same cafes asthe impressionists, their appearance on Degas’s canvas brings fiction rather close to reality, although Degas toyed with them by lowering their bohemian level to sordid depths.

Cafe-Concert andMusicHall: Womenwho Serve The somber mood of Degas’s Absinthe is a rarity among im ‑ pressionist pictures, but it is consistent with the penetration with which heand Manet portrayed café life. The same penet‑ ration shows in their representations of the kind of café that, like the brasserie, found special fortune in their generation, the cafe-concert. In the ne x t section of this chapter, Degas’s por‑ trayals of café performers will be discussed, and at that time this popular Parisian institutionwill bedescribed. Meanwhile, to introduce Manet, who gave performers only a marginal presence in his major renderings of the cafe-concert, it need only besaid that this kind of café hadastage on which singers, acrobats, comedians, musical groups, and vaudevillians took their tu rns amusing the clients. Many indoor cafes‐concerts had rather small stages, but n ew ones were built in the 18605 and 18705 with huge stages, rather like music halls. Outdoor cafes‐concerts used covered pavilions fronting on fenced‐off areas where the clients sat. Both indoor and outdoor types charged extra for the entertainment, either by elevating the prices of their drinks, or by levyinganentry fee or seat charge. Manet represented outdoor performers only a few times,

in modest works that are overshadowed by his pictures of waitresses and clients in indoor cafes‐concerts. For Comer in a Café‐Coflcert (Pl. 77), Manet asked a waitress whom he admired to pose for him in his studio and she agreed on con ‑ dition that her boyfriendaccompany her. It ishewhom Manet placed in the foreground, with his worker’s smock, cap, and clay pipe. (The purplish tones of his drink suggest wine, the traditional drink of the Parisian worker. His solidly planted form anchors the whole composition.3 Beyond him sits a man, shown wittily by his grey hat, and further along is a woman in lost profile. This sequence of heads gives some depth to the composition, but serves chiefly to help induce ou r perception of a crowded scene. The stage is relegated to the rear, where we see a dancer or singer; to the left and right are musicians indicated by fragmentary profiles and portions of trombone, violin bow, and bass. From the compact group of heads and hats in the fore‑

ground rises the brightly l i t face ofthe waitress. Her head caps asubstantial pyramid formed with the other heads and, lower down, her clutch of beer balances the raised hand of the worker. These symmetries hold the picture together, but they are inherently unstable.-The waitress leans in towards the left to deposit a beer, but she looks o f f to the right: her profes‑ sional eye is on the lookout for another client’s signal. Manet therefore characterizes her craft by showing her movements,

76

which contrast with the placid bulk of the b l } , worker. ,' In the smaller Café-Concert (P1. 78), Manet also a

busy life ofa cafe‐concert by combining asolid p i c With forces that threaten to break it apart. The thre figures form a triangle, but they look in different, and exist in three separate psychological realms, T i. is taking advantage ofa calm mom e n t to have her: She stands confidently, hand on hip, while loo ,. the left. She belongs in this place and her assurang dominate it. The woma n in the foreground is in‘i mood and sits in a drooping position. Like the fi 3 Plum (P1. 75), she is n o t aproper bourgeoise, for she. ing, the mark of the liberated women of uncertain5 n o w frequented cafés. She has only recently sat do if... cigarette is newly l i t and her beer is hardly tasted, t, her is apackage in shiny blue paper, either apastry o. a sign that she has dropped in while on her way Stu else. i In contrast to this wistful figure, the top‐hatted .’.~

entirely at his ease. Hands over his cane, head ere -, at the performer on the stage, whom we see r e fle mirror in the upper left. His costume is a bit eccent his cu t of beard, harks back to the Second Empire.)‑ beaBonapartist (he recalls Daumier’s inventedfigu ‑ or an actor who affects such clothing.3'5 He sta 6} whole class of artists, actors, dandies, and entertai g‑ adventurers who belonged in these settings. Wit detachment of thefldneur, hecould move freely in 5,“ places, treating them as stages for self‐display. 1 sense of self‐confidence with the worker in Comer Concert, despite their differences. This is because _'r patronize cafés without the ambiguity or insecuri to unaccompanied women, who ran the risk of .: admirers whether they wished to or no t . The con r: t w o men in Manet’s pair of cafe‐concert pictures female clients in The Plum and Café-Concert sh observant Manet really was (as well as how rt; identified with such self‐possessed males). ' Manet’s t w o pictures also show why the Pa

concert was such an ideal mixing place. Strangers [55 n o t associate o u t on the street could here sit side b. giv'ing only minor place to the performance (mor painted, as though partly o u t of focus), Manet rv that singers or comedians were intended principa customers for drink; the real business of the café‐co‘n‑ place in the foreground of his compositions. Paw keep to themselves or tide over fragmentary convc listening to the performance. Seated individually these smaller cafes‐concerts, and n o t in the fixed :: music hall or theater, they could move about if th Manet shows the casualness of these socialjuxtaposf yet he hints more at separateness than at convi ‘ glitter and attraction of the cafés are captured in th of his color and brushwork, but his figures do not f‘ cate with one another. ‘ Clients are only temporary visitors, but the W3

long there, andManet’s t w o pictures are virtual cele their roles. Café waitresses were greeted in Manet’S.5

flanet also typ ; asolid pictorial

' t . The three p a in different dire realms. The

0 have her ow . while looking. her assurance 1»;

, i ke the figure 5 roise, for she is f; 7L1ncertain stat ~ ntly sat down, on dly tasted. In frm er a pastry or a n l her way some»,

op‐hatted male fil , head erect, he U

bit eccentric an‘a, nd Empire. H 1611thfigure Raf: ‘35 He stands fin 1dentertainers,~f :ting5. With th

;display. He S? :r in Comer in a" is because m e n ! ;r insecurity attm the risk of a t t t . The c o n t r a s t iert pictures i w u 7-Concert show

a s how r e a - j ts). .. by the Parisia‑ Strangers wh re sit side by 51°“ l a n c e (more skfl ;), Manet remix d principally to“ "the cafe-concert; ; i t ions. Patrons itary c o n v e r s a - f ' dividually at ti} n the fixed set about if they ' ialjuxtapositio 1at conviviali' >tured in the b l' i r e s d o n o t c o f "

but the waitrc f virtual celebra x in Manet’s gen

77. Manet, Comer in a Café-Concert, 1878‐79. London, National Gallery.

_\piinng the n ew Paris. Before the Second Empire, ambu‑ " Café serv1ce had been prov1ded largely by men (women '_- f.requ¢ntly behind the counter), but the entrepreneurs of rapidly spreading brasseries and cafes‐concerts 'quickly ied that young women increased the sales of drinks. In 18605 the Parisian café waitress became a stock figure in o n 5 and illustrations. Like other young working women, asoften the prey ofmales and assumed to be“available.”

"c were, of course, because the open society of cafés made ,- ideal market places for sex, aswell asfor other kinds of ; ess (salesman and brokers cultivated clients there)..The nging populatlon of Paris, which included so.many Single 4 and women , fostered the r i s e of clandestine pros t i tu ‑ «, as distinct from that regulated by government. It is éurprising that brasseries afemmes came into ex1stence, es‑ hments in which waitresses used theirJobs as covers for

titution.36 Men might have felt free to regard waitresses Manet’s as fair game, but Manet, who invented every kc oftheir forms, held them alooffrom any ofthe by‐play 1.male clients favored by contemporary illustrators. In arenas of drink, music, and leisure, it is they and the

9 t p7erformers who embody work; Manet gives them "I .

1‐tgwoman facing usbehind her coun te r in Manet’s Bar at ! olies-Bergére (P1. 80) is a more ambiguous figure. The ous reflections in the mirror to the right provoke the issue "ale‐female commerce, but the picture asawhole does n o t Ive it. Like the waitresses, this woman is a verseuse, a er of drinks, but she does n o t move about. The stationary j 0 which she is so fimly fixed suggests an environment r e n t from the cafes‐concerts we have just looked at, and

it was. The Folies‐Bergére was more amusic hall than _ oncert, and its history has to be consulted if we are to ‘c sense of Manet’s canvas. Shown in the Salon of 1882, it fit last ambitious picture heexhibited before his early death following year, and his last major statement on the public a of Paris-spectacle. f e Folies‐Bergere (near the rue Bergere) owes the first {of its name to the eighteenth‐century “folie,” anopen‐air a“ where Parisians could drink or dance while being enter ‑ :d. Its evolution is another capsule history of Second wire speculation.3’8 It began asa department store devoted dding, opened in '1860, one of the newer urban forms mmerce. Perhaps because ofits favorable location on the 'icher, just above the grands boulevards, it added a “salle pectacles” to the rear of the store in 1863. This was so sfuI‐active leisure being more lucrative than passive‑

" In 1869 the whole enterprise shifted to variety shows in lation of London music halls. In November 1871, the ted entrepreneur Le’on Sari took it over. He remodeled ’_1de and ou t , refurbishing t w o large spaces. One was the .den,” an impressive hall With balconies (covered by an g until it was roofed over in 1925).39 The other, where

St Places us, was the horseshoe‐shaped theater with fixed 11nthe orchestra and abalcony above, supported on col‑ : (tWO of them show in Manet’s mirror, near the reflected 1.' e Counter). Sari removed the seats on the ground floor thC balcony to make r o om for tables, chairs, several

,‐and Space for walking about (the promenoir). In the bal‑

cony he limited the boxes to t w o front tiers and left r o om for another promenade behind them. We are on this level in Manet’s picture, facing one of the mirrors which clad the perimeter wall (they show clearly in Chéret’s poster, PI. 79), in front of which the woma n tends her counter. The mirror reflects the balcony on the opposite side. Sari learned that he could make more money than would

the usual cafe-concert if he combined its freedom of move ‑ me n t with some of the features ofa theater. He could charge admission, and extra for seats in the orchestra and the bal‑ cony loges. In addition, hecould earn money from the alcohol sold on both floors. Some clients would come for the spec‑ tacles, which were on a grander scale than a cafe‐concert: circuses (with animals), acrobats, whole operettas, ballets, troupes of comedians, etc. Others came principally to social‑ ize, and could ignore the stage presentation while chatting and drinking along the promenades. There was precedent for this in the ordinary cafe‐concert, such asthe one Degas shows in Café‐Concert (Spectators) (PI. 89), where there are rows of bench seats facing the stage, and tables and chairs along the rear and sides. Closer to Sari’s ambitions were the “cafe’s‑ spectacles” of the 18305 and 18405,40 and the huge Ba‐ta‐clan, named after one of Offenbach’s operettas, a cafe‐concert re ‑ built in 1863. Sari surpassed them by offering more spectacular entertainment and better‐appointed promenades. He had his

79. Chéret, Aux Folies‐Bergére, 1875. Paris, Musée de la Publicité.

\Jr.~ 4." x umoumrm e n t - x v u.--.............. J a w ] . V~ '. ’ L .a“ PR]. . 7m

79

o w n orchestra and dance troupe, but also booked the reigning favorites among vaudeville, circus, and other diversions, in ‑ cluding the Hanlon Lees, American trapeze performers whose poster shows in the window of Manet’s At the Café (Pl. 70). In the late 18705, Sari charged t w o francs for the cheapest seats and five for reserved seats, about twice the prices at the Ba‐ta‑ clan. Drinks were much higher than in ordinary cafés, asone might expect. Manet’s painting, therefore, evokes one of Paris’s mo r e

expensive and chic places. It is t rue that a student, sales clerk, or prostitute could come to the Folies-Bergere, but only by dressing up and squandering asmall fortune. If the Folies was a social mixing place, it was nonetheless quite dominated by the well‐to-do. Manet’s o w n society wen t there, urbane writers, critics, collectors, painters, actors, demi‐mondaines, and members of the Jockey Club. Appropriately enough, several of his models and friends can be found in the reflected balcony: the painter Gaston Latouche said that heposed for the m a n to the right.“ Manet’s barmaid was a waitress from the Folies‐Bergere, Suzon, of whom he made a separate pastel portrait in street clothes. For the Bar she posed in his studio (where he kept a marble table used in several other café paintings), as had the woman in Corner in a Cafe-Concert (P1. 77), and for the same reason: Manet felt the need of the real person ashe constructed the imaginary one. What should we make of the arresting figure he painted?

Some contemporaries thought she was little better than a prostitute, since barmaids had long had a reputation for low morals, and the Folies was well known asa racy place. Many modern historians also have concluded that she should be seen asaprostitute.42 Of course, Sari hired pretty women to enhance the sale of alcohol, and his advertisements frequently showed top‐hatted men leaning on one of the bars, flirting with the barmaids (Pl. 79). These verseuses were aspiring actresses and other young w om e n trying to make a career in Paris. Thanks to the memoirist Arnold Mortier, we have a glimpse of one of them. Writing in 1876 of the new women of the cur ren t season at the Athenée‐Comique, he mentions “Blanche Rose. Blond with dark eyes. At the Folies-Bergere took care of a little bar where Enlgish bookmakers used to gather every evening. It’s for that reason that she smiled at Sari who was in the audience.”43 In these few words Mortier documents the rise of one of Sari’s barmaids who graduated to the stage. We can be quite sure that Blanche-Rose and Suzon lived less conventional lives than aproper bourgeoise, and that they might well have had lovers, or occasionally slept with a theater manager. But between this and prostitution there is an enormous gap. In painting Suzon at her bar, Manet, like Mortier, showed

he was among the cognoscenti who appreciated beautiful, modish w ome n and used them to embody modern Paris. In his painting, the whole world of the Folies‐Bergere is reduced to this young woman and to o u r thoughts as we confront her. She has a striking presence, all the more so because she is firmly painted, compared to the softened images in the mirror, and she is solidy installed within the shallow space, thanks to the marble counter, bearer of one of the mos t beauti‑ ful still lives in French painting. Centrally positioned, she utterly dominates a busy composition whose flatness is con ‑

80

fining, despite the rather smoky distance we can 53 mirror. Squeezed though she is between mirror a n d , she has animmense dignity andself‐containment. (An about this can be resolved by comparing her Wit woman, P1. 74). She is also a disconcerting figure her matter‐of‐fact, cool glance seems to lack express Her aloofness is all the mo r e disturbing because i.

m o n assumptions about barmaids would make us f more forthcoming woman. That Manet defeats thes tions by fashioning an image of remoteness is one go. to his picture. In his austere figure we find the anony loneliness inherent in the arbitrary encounters of life.44Wehave already seen these traits ofurban tensi Plum, The Street Singer, and even in The Railroad (P ‑ 31), works that range over Manet’s whole career. L i k these are all productions of thefifineur. and the natu l. disdains emotional involvement with the anonymo; of city life in order to master them, and who therefor singular detachment to his figures, lest they reach ou ou r emotions. Suzon’s impassivity should makeust i, ofGeorg Simmel’s concept ofobjectivity, and also 0S}; pretation of the money economy which reduces h counters to abstract te rms and leads to the blasé i protects against involvement.45 Suzon’s distant asp therefore result from Manet’s having responded' attraction of Sari’s performances, n o r to the glamo society which swarmed through his building, but ' the condition of this participant and victim of comm leisure. None of this denies that we continue to hav

readingher iconic image. Our difficulty iscompoun-l displaced reflection in the mirror, a rendering that " judged by the tradition of naturalistic illusions.46 reflected world is shifted to the right as though tall were on a slant, even though the counter seems p a r N o t only is Suzon’s reflection t o o far to the right, bu her image addresses would have to be standing in th spot, that is, if we demand reasonableness from th, Evidently it is an unreasonable construction, and so its internal contradictions is the elaborate puzzle the forced on us. Manet hadoften submitted to the Salo , m o s t outrageous works, including those with stran tures from customary perspective, such as The E Maximilian (P1. 63), rejected in 1869. To tweak th conservatives was part of his performance asthe bel‑ r an circles around the stodgy bourgeoisie. And perfo was: contemporaries recount his pleasure in receivin of visitors to his studio while he was painting A ' Folies-Bergére. As for Sari’s performers, they are amusingly red,

acrobat’s legs and trapeze in the upper left corner 05 ing, so that Manet can concentrate on one edge 0 music hall. Suzon faces us with her impassive gaze fessional waiting for o u r order. Unlike her, ho ’ image in the mirror bends slightly towards the m ’ man, as though responding to him. The man’s fa: expressionless, but his direct gaze (turned into abol the fixity of painting) shows his interest in the wom~ fashion, Manet makes us consider this woman’s 8C ‑

lack expression

llCl make us ex-L defeats these exp

1d the anonymi .' i coun te rs o f mg; f urban tension n 3Railroad (Pls. 71 le career. Like th nd the naturalis be anonymous 9 who therefore ga

ld make us thin 1 y, and also ofhis

o the blasé l o d ; distant aspect 1v7 respondedn o t7if to the glamour?

tim o f c o m m e r

inue to have m" is compounde ‘‑ ndering that is é‑ illusions.46 as though the j

t e r seems parall1" ,the right, but or tanding in the 7 rness from the g") 1ction, and soru'

d to the SalonJ J? ise with s t r a n g e chasThe Exe‘ ace asthe bel-esp ;ie. And perfor ‘1' re in receiving at ; painting A B4?

nusingly reducff? left corner of n one edge of 3“ npassive gaze, like her, howe" wards the mus * The man’s face k ned into a bold 9' st in the woman. woman’s actu l

r m . 4:39 '

tofessional barmaid, and her potential role asenvisioned by it man. Her frontal image is correct, even distant from us; thing hints at her availability after hours. In the mirror, her f=0re yielding natu re is revealed, detached asit were from her “fly by the man’s powers of wish‐fulfillment. llt is precisely because Manet first establishes acold dialogue We a r the statuesque barmaid and the viewer that the second 10gue in the mirror gains its peculiar force. We can’t really 1 that man, yet because we are in the position he would ; py in front of the bar, he becomes o u r second self. His ' embodied image seems to stand for a male client’s hidden Oughts when facing such an attractive woman. The appa‑ " t1Y aberrant detachment of the reflection in the mirror from {5Woman, and of the man from ourselves, is the game this ’,Yartist is playing. The very fulcrum on which the picture

$1933, in other words, is a violation of the conventions of .d1tl<_)nal ar t . To have “corrected” it would have destroyed '3palnting.

Cafe‐Concert: Women who Perform Degas did n o t at all follow Manet in his subtle depictions of barmaid or waitress of the cafe‐concert. Their opposed temperaments nowhere show better than in this contrast, for Degas concentrated almost exclusively on the female per‑ former. Beginning in 1875, hedevoted about forty pastels and prints to this theme.47 Only one of them (P1. 89) features the clients of the cafe‐concert. Al l the others are interpretations of singers in action. To study them is to confront more directly than with Manet the natu re of the cafe‐concert and its place in Parisian society.

Although there were various antecedents to the café‑ concert , the sudden rise in their popularity began in the 18505, with the advent of the Second Empire and the dramatic changes wrought in the capital. Early historians all agree that the Café des Ambassadeurs and the Café M o r e ] had set the vogue in the 18405. They were housed in twin buildings

81

designed by jacques Hittorff in 1841 for the park-like area where the Champs‐Elysées meets the place deg la Concorde (a corner of the Ambassadeurs shows in Renoir’s painting of 1867, P1. 8). Taking their cue from the open‐air concerts that had for many years been held there, both cafés added outdoor pavilions behind the main buildings. This whole region had long been set aside for fairs, circuses (Hittorff also built the nearby circus building in 1841), Punch and judy shows, and various itinerant entertainments, so Parisians of the Second Empire were conforming to awell‐established tradition when they sought distraction on this once royal edge of the city. By the 18505, visitors and Parisians could choose among

three cafes‐concerts there, the Ambassadeurs, the Alcazar d’été (formerly Café Morel), and the Café de l’horloge. Exten‑ sive use of gas lamps‐foreigners constantly remarked on Paris’s extravagance in this regard‐extended warm‐weather days well into the night. Their luminous spheres glow pro‑ minently in Degas’s best‐known compositions (Pls. 83, 84, 85). At first hung from trees by café proprietors, gas lamps were spread throughout this verdant area by municipal auth‑ orities, who helped sanction its appeal as one of the prin‑ cipal nocturnal promenades of the city. By the 18605 it was fairly crowded with organized entertainments: cafes‐concerts, municipal concerts, the circus, semi‐permanent fair buildings, several theaters, an enclosed Panorama, and one of the mos t popular of the city’s gaslit dancing gardens, the B31Mabille. There was no doubt of this district’s function asaplace of gay abandon to compensate for the vast demolitions and removals which were dislocating the population of the city’s center. The imperial presence Was discreet but thorough. The

municipal concerts, inaugurated in 1859, were frequently tied to imperial celebrations; the circus was renamed the Cirque de l’Impératrice; the Panoramaheldpaintingsof LouisNapoleon’s battles; imperialcensorship passedonevery song, Operetta, and play performed in the various cafés and theaters. Gone were the itinerants who used to set up portable platforms and pass the hat afterwards. Their places were taken by impresarios who hired entertainers, enclosed them in pavilions and fenced‑ o f f areas, and raked in the money spent on the alcohol which sustained these new fortunes. The impresarios chafed under constant censorship, but for

all that, imperial dictatorship was at times awelcome partner. In 1863 and 1864, a sweeping set of decrees suppressed many of the privileges which had hemmed in the theatrical world, and opened theater construction and management to any‑ one who could pu t up the money and observe basic building codes. There was an immediate boom in new construction and in the conversion of buildings (such asthe Folies‐Bergere) to various kinds of theater: vaudeville, cafe‐concert, comic opera, comedy, pantomime, drama, and circus. This was fol‑ lowed in 1866 and 1867 by another set ofauthoritarian decrees, of particular benefit to cafes‐concerts. These wiped o u t the guild restrictions that had protected established theater and music by forbidding café entertainers to wear costume, em ‑ ploy props, or use more than brief excerpts from published plays and music.48 Whether or n o t devised with the 1867 Universal Exposition in mind‐they probably were‐these decrees led to aremarkable expansion of cafes‐concerts, which rose from amodest number, probably t w o to three dozen in

82

the early 18605, to more than 1 0 0 adecade later, andn.» by the early 18805. On summer evenings the Ambassadeurs and the“

d’été were especially frequented by Parisians and visitors, whom guide books directed there. Since 1) vored the Ambassadeurs, we might look at What g" special éclat. It had pride of place as one of the 0 1 d concerts, and the advantage of its tree‐lined surroun. i repertoire was much like that of the indoor cafes-co” the rest ofthe city: clowns, comedians, singers, acroba plays, operettas, and vaudeville. Its personnel was l l . that ofits wintertime rivals: anorchestra of fifteen m5 musicians, twelve to fifteen performers, and fifteen 1 waiters and other salaried staff All these employees a constantly shifting clientele of about 1 ,200 seateJ the authorized perimeter. It was abig business, and ,l could afford to hire major stars, often plucking them 35, previous winter’s greatest successes elsewhere. NOtab smar t (therefore more expensive) than mos t of its 5 was regularly listed asa “very fine establishment,”49

81. Degas, The Impresario, c. 1876‐77. San Francisco, Fine Artstv,

elater, andnearv -'d€books that lookeddown on such places ast o o bawdy. In inc ways the Ambassadeurs was the open‐air equivalent of , u m fi e m HiLikC the Folies, the Ambassadeurs had an enterprismg anager. PierreDucarre took lt over in time for the Universal x osition of I 867 and was i t s owner‐director until the end of (a Century. Degas frequented the Ambassadeurs in the mid‑ 8705 and seems to have admired Ducarre. He made four “C11studies of him on one sheet and began an 011 of him, I owing apowerful figure walking away from the observer .1. 81)- Ducarre himself defined success in this new busmess :” words that would have appealed to Degas: “One must , ways beon the lookout for novelties, for original crea t ions , or unexpected talents. And no matter how much success enjoyed by an establishment, one mus t always think of

uckin h __ g on i t , of perfecting it.”50 Ducarre launched a gt emfr ' ' l d‘ L'bert one of the rare maleWhere. Notabl umber of new stars, i n c u i n g 1 , . ,

m o s t of its ri _.-rformers drawn by Degas, and Emelie Becat (P1. 82). blishment ” 4 9 e Degas was no t attracted by the male Singers, comedians, or

’ crobats who took the stage of the Ambassadeurs, any more ,uanhewas interested in maleballet dancers. Despite the fame ( some men (one thinks of Paulus, whose great acclaimbegan ' ound 1880, but who had already appeared at the Ambassa‑ ‘eurs in 1871 and 1872), it was the female singer who sominated the era. The famous Thérésa (Emma Valadon) set i etone with her smashing success in 1864 at the Ambassa‑ eurs’ nearby rival, the Alcazar d’été. She quickly became ‘ne of the stars of Paris, “the Patti of the beer mug,” invited .0appear before the imperial cour t , and subject of admiring whrases of Mallarmé and of Degas (“She opens her huge .. outh and ou t comes the grossest, the most delicate, the mos t 'ttily tender voice there is.”51) Her success is a revealing

fndex of Second Empire and Third Republic morality, n o t nespite, but because of the slang, the sexual innuendos, the ' orking‐class origin of much of her material:

eurs and the w isians and by f», J e r e . Since De ok at what gain. reof the oldest; ned surrounding-‑ loor cafés‐conc’ ingers, acrobats, rsonnel was 3130 aof fifteen to , and fifteen to “employees ca t .. : 1 ,200 seated usiness, and as ‘ ‑ l“ prOVln

cisco, Fine Arts M“:

One only has to look at Mlle Thérésa to recognize that , she isachild of the people. She has that kind of virility that is shared by both sexes in the lower levels of population;

Aits charm is in its force. One of the personages that she portrays is said to have posed for a Venus; in this case the model’s marble seems to have been shaped more by a

, pruning hook than a chisel. Moreover, in her physiog‑ nomy, a lot of expression in the gaze; an ensemble that is no t at all displeasing, and sometimes her gestures have an elegance that contrasts with the vulgarity and the exces‑ swely broad tone of her lyric repertoire.5 , Like that writer and the dandies who crowded the Ambas‑ "-deurs, Degas admired the street-wise virility of the women hosang on its stage. Since heworked in asilent medium, he ncentrated on gesture asaway of suggesting this admirable : lgarity. The Theresa‐like figure of La Chanson duchien (Pl. 4) holds her forearms up to give prominence to her drooping Iands.53 Her closed eyes and uptilted chin, however, convey fisenSe n o t of a funny animal, but of entire absorption in her H g : 3mixture of the delicate and the gross, asDegas said. Csame mixture was found in Emélie Becat, the singer he _med to more often than to any other. Hemade five prints of er, 1nCluding Plate 82; one contains three separate composi‑

v

82. Degas, Aux Ambassadeurs: Mlle Bérat, c. 1877. Ar t Institute of Chicago.

tions of her on the same sheet. In Plate 82 she has both arms spread widely, shoulders hunched, and head bent down. Heavy bows on bodice, elbows, and the back of her costume would have accentuated the constant motions of her body. In other prints he shows her doubled forward, hands on knees, or with one arm stretched eccentrically outward, its fore‑ a rm dangling down. One can imagine her singing a refrain from her first hit, Le Turbot et la crevette (The Turbot and the Shrimp):

Turbot, turbot of my heart. You’ve got me! You’ve got me! You’ll be my downfall.54

Becat was appreciated for her “epileptic style,” a frenetic use of body and limbs. In this she was like other notable café singers, for they all developed particular kinds of gesture and movement which helped identify them and which they utilized to inject sexual or political meaning into otherwise innocent‐sounding phrases. These striking styles were especi‑ ally necessary in the cafe‐concert. Clients were free to come and go, to drink and chat, so it took a strong act to claim their attention. Besides, the anonymity of the well‐packaged entertainment and of its huge audience could be partly dis‑ guised by the frenzied clamor of the performer, who seemed to seek a personal exchange with each client, enlisting them as participants. Edward King, that rather stuffy American visitor, lamented this participation aswell asthe fare offered in the outdoor cafe‐concert: The songs are local, glaring with coarse mannerisms and rude gestures. . . ' , a fat woman rises, makes a short, u n ‑

83

. Degas, Café‐Concert, c. 1877. Washington, Corcoran Gallery.

graceful bow, and sings aburlesque song. It is an echo of boulevard life. . . .The audiences are more enthusiastic here than under roofs; they rise and swing hats and bonnets, they scream and throw bouquets, and sometimes adaring suitor goes to the footlights and hands to his goddess, in person, his offering of flowers or epistle of love.55 The singer reaching ou t toward her audience is the theme of

t w o of Degas pastels (Pls. 83, 85) shown in the third impres‑ sionist exhibition in 1877 (alongside Women onaCafé Terrace, Evening, P1. 47 , and several ballet dancers). Both may repre‑ sent Victorine Demay, whose repertoire had many “an echo of boulevard life.”56 In one she plants right hand on hip and pumps her left arm, which Degas makes disappear in the process. In the other she bends low and emphatically gestures back at herself with her left thumb. We can almost hear De‑ may singing to her cornet player in “Horace’s Trumpet”:

I ’d like t’be the deal chair Where you sit‐so’s I can hear you better.

Or refusing the offer ofa nutcracker from an admirer: Me, I crack nu t s By sittin’ down on ’em!57

In Plate 83 we have to imagine ourselves as members of the audience seated behind three women whose costumes have the loud effects sought by women of dubious virtue, the kind the rakish man on the left comes here to meet . just beyond are the musicians, whose diverse origins andmediocre

86

pay are captured in their motley assortment of hats a c cu t of hair. What an urban scene this is, despite i. door setting: people of different positions, different a’i different classes (except for the working class), Vin microcosmof the city’s varied andshifting population” by the brilliant gaslight ofthe stage, we look up to t ' in red (PI. 61). She gestures offto the right, amove tha the composition dynamic, but threatens its stability. H ward mo v emen t i s checked b y the brightly coloredW the left, who serve asa counterbalance, by the wide : the pavilion support which pins her down, and by if oflights that continues the axis of her outstretched a . ther, her potential mo v emen t is blocked by the huge , the bass viol, that symbol of manhood risingupward male orchestra. In Plate 85, the singer, bending over to display her ‘

seems to be addressing the orchestra leader. There customers represented here, so the orchestra takes on 3 of the men in the audience to whom the singer m0 appeals. Cafe‐concert songs were usually devoted to lo.‑ Degas alludes to them by having the wome n face the Pf m e n who r u n the show, as they r u n life, by prOVi music. Their instruments‐the leader’s bow, his fir ' violin scroll, and again that oversized bass‐enter 113 into the confrontation. The women who grace the stage in bothpastels were

tively known asthe “corbeille,” a rich t e rm meaning th dress circle, the reserved enclosure in a stock exch flower bed, a flower or fruit basket, or simply a i

agpopulation! ‘ look up to th i t , a m o v e that r : its stability. Her tly colored wo ,. , by the wide

sing upwardfro

zodisplay her ch leader. There a estra takes on th he singer most I devoted to lov men face the me

carre and other impresarios quite knowingly exploited the men for their appeal; male performers were kept offstage. eW of the corbeille were enter ta iners awaiting their turns, 16 were beginners who would appear Without pay in the es of proving themselves, andothers were n o t performers 1], simply attractive women hired to round o u t the Visual éring- The sexual role of the torbezlle was Widely commented 511, Menpursued them, of course, and the reputations of the és_concerts owed something to this commerce. Because the actors of the better establishments forbade open Signalling m the stage, there grew up aspecial gestural language. The

one held an admirer’s bouquet could signal agreement to et after the Show; tapping one side of the face with a fan uld be a similar positive sign. The women in Degas’s t w o beillrs flourish bouquets and fans, and their separate move‑ msand poses‐-‐inPlate 85, the woman in pale blue immedi‑

behind the singer has turned entirely around‐suggest "1r ambitions to be recognized asindividuals.

her Degas n o r Manet was apassive recorder ofwhat w e n t n the cafes‐concerts. To gain a fuller understanding of knowing interpretations, wehave to look further into the

ireof this particular form of commercialized entertainment. e hindered as much ashelped by modern ar t historians

have usually placed t o o much emphasis on the low life atronized these places. It is best to begin by looking into

performers, their songs, and their clients to see the degree ihich the canaille, the riffraff, were represented. We can ( t u r n to the other social strata who fit into this strange and derful institution, especially since among them were

sts like Manet and Degas, hardly to be counted among the ff.

eading cafe-concert singers, like Thérésa and Bécat, were ost all from the menu peuple, the lower classes, and prided mselves on their origins. By birthright they had access to et slang, to gutter humor and gestures which were central heir art . The titles of some typical songs, virtually u n ‑

anslatable, are a good indication: “I advise you n o t to stick r nose in there”; “It’s squeezing m e . Move it o u t of here”; e helped myself to a lot.”58 Both singers and songs, reover, grew o u t of a populist and radical tradition that uded Be’ranger in the first quarter of the century, aswell as rre Dupont and Joseph Darcier, both associated with the olution of 1848. Béranger was twice imprisoned for his

,. gs. Dupont and Darcier suffered heavily from censorship. V'rcier’s role continued well into the impressionist era, as erfornier, songwriter, and asTheresa’s mentor. He was co‑ uthor of “La canaille,” a song launched by the robust Rosa Ordas (Rosalie Martini) in 1869. Its famous refrain was “j’en Slj’en suis!” (meaning “I am also canaille”). Bordas sang it heHotel de Ville during the Commune, and when she took Pagain after the bloody repression of the Paris revolt, her eners greeted it asapro‐communard song.59 Somehow Bordas’s rendering of “La canaille” escaped the SOY (perhaps because it had been approved before 1870),

tWe can be sure the one or more police agents or mouchards Orniers) reported the incident. The more oppressive the

government, the m o r e worried it was about these “parlia‑ ments ofthe people.” Al l through the Empire, cafes and cafes‑ concerts were well attended by informers, great numbers were closed down for political reasons, and the government censor required approval of every cafe song before it could be aired. Faced with the sheer volume of such texts the censors were hard put to suppress all instances of excessive vulgarity and political dissent, especially since a singer’s wink or gesture could subvert the m o s t innocent‐sounding phrase. For e x ‑ ample, the imperial censor may have been suspicious about “Le Sire de Framboisy,” a song by Bourgat and Laurent de Rille, but did n o t prevent its becoming a rallying cry for opposition to the Emperor. By burlesque expressions and dumb show, the singers made the medieval Sire and his wife into a parody of Louis Napoleon and Eugenie. jules Valles, that unrepentant communard, believed that in a time of cen‑ sorship and repression, the famous Thérésa embodied the spirit of freedom and opposition, and “sapped an empire by holding it up to laughter.”(’” Valles’s phrase foretells Kracauer’s view that Offenbach’s operettas had a role in the downfall of Louis Napoleon. Cafe’ song and operetta were n o t all that far apart. The larger cafes‐concerts frequently put on operettas, and Offenbach’s chief rival I‐lervé (Florimond

hits, “La gardeuse d’ours” (The Bear Keeper). For a time, he also directed the orchestra of the Eldorado, one of the leading cafes‐concerts. The Ba‐ta‐clan, aswe saw, was named for one of Offenbach’s operettas, and composers of cafe’ songs regu‑ larly mined successful operettas for phrases, refrains, and personages.

Censorship of comic opera and of café-concert programs did n o t end with the fall of the Second Empire. jules Simon, minister of education in the early years of the Third Republic, was an outspoken enemy of the cafes‐concerts, which “distri‑ bute and sell poison among us.”61 Fear of the Commune led Simon and many others to associate cafés and cafes‐concerts with the menacing canaille, and police shadowing continued. In the five months following President MacMahon’s dissolv‑ ing the Chamber of Deputies on 16 May 1877, 2 , 2 0 0 cafes were shut down as part of a campaign to stifle the opposi‑ tion.62 MacMahon, general of the troops that repressed the Commune, was repudiated in the elections of October 1877, which restoredarepublican majority to the Chamber. Censor~ ship gradually slackened, but police spies continued to haunt cafes and cafes‐concerts (and the official censors’ posts were abolished only after the t u r n of the century).

Government monitoring of cafes and cafes‐concerts would seem to prove that they were indeed the precincts of the tanaillc who resisted ordained politics and morality. However, the clients of the cafes‐concerts included many middle‐class and upper-class people, and we have to puzzle o u t their roles if we are to make sense of these marketplaces of salty enter ‑ tainment, and of the impressionists’ paintings of them. It has already been remarked that the Ambassadeurs, the Folies‑ Bergeres, and the unidentified cafés painted by Manet and Degas were rather expensive places. The artists did n o t fre‑ quent commonplace cafes, and prices alone largely excluded the working class from the Ambassadeurs and the Folies. Zola, in anangry polemic full ofirony, asks:

Is it the worker who goes into fashionable cafés, where high prices give nice people the right to enter? They’re all there, drinking, talking business, politics, or smu t . The waiters are neat, there is gold décor, no one has yet de‑ nounced cafe’s,in parliament. Useless people drown them‑ selves in absinthe without having the worker’s excuses, and they die softheaded, their hands unstained by any work, after having slumped over the same marble table for thirty years.“ There is also plentiful visual evidence to confront the

privileged world that Manet and Degas recreated. The Musée Carnavalet has many prints of workers’ restaurants and cafes by Henri Valentin and ahost of other illustrators, and in the album of etchings that Le’opold Flameng published in 1860, Paris qui s’en 11a, Paris qm’ vient, there are representations of the Cabaret de la Mere Marie and other plebeian cafés. Merely to glance at Roman Ribéra’s Café‐Chantant (P1. 86) is to see how far one can get from Degas’s Ambassadeurs (Pls. 83, 85).

‐ ' \ . s ‘

86. Ribéra, Café‐Chantant, 1876. Washington, Corcoran Gallery.

When Manet and Degas looked around them at the Ambas‑ sadeurs or the Folies‐Bergere, they did n o t see the working class. They saw some clerks, shop assistants, prostitutes, and demimondaines, and a lot more middle-class and upper‐class customers, including perfectly respectable women whose pre‑ sence particularly irritated conservatives like Louis Veuillot.64 These latter were slumming and were often represented in contemporary illustrations, looking o u t from their loges over the cheaper seats below‐the audience was a wonderful part of the show. Manet and Degas would also have seen fellow artists, fidrzeurs, dandies, and the élite of Parisian intellectuals. If they could have grouped in one place those known to have frequented the better cafes-concerts (most of whom w r o t e about them), they would have spotted Delvau, Fournel, Mallarmé, the Goncourts, Daudet, Taine, Veuillot, Banville, Sardou, and Renan, aswell as the composers Auber, Rossini, Hervé, and Offenbach (also the latter’s librettists Halévy, Degas’s close friend, and Meilhac). For painters, journalists, writerS, and musicians, the café‑

concer t was a source of ideas, of useful refrains, Odd popular phrases and striking costumes‐therefore a , tive bit o f amusement . Cafe’ songs and vaudeville thrive cur ren t events which were filtered through lively clever phrases, and telling gestures. In them Manet , parallels for his scintillating brushwork, his quick gm1 things, and his opposition to the stodgy terms of 0“ painting. Degas’s sardonic wit equally found matches ther‑ his caricatural treatment of clients and performers, and fo idiosyncratic combination of pastel over monotype, a ,. nique that alone constituted a repudiation of the hiera’ of the fine‐arts establishment. (For that matter, the co tions of his cafe‐concert pastels owed a debt to D3 cartoons.(’5) The combination ofleisure and work that artists and w.;:.

m e t with in the cafe‐concert was an irresistible lure, . i more so because they enjoyed the irreverent, fraction vironment. The cafe‐concert expressed the spirit of op‘ tion to gove rnmen t and to sanctioned morality that r» of them shared. For them, in an era of limited freedo, expression, it was a safe way of venting their oppo (relatively safe: police spies kept a careful eye on artis ‘ intellectuals, n o t just on political activists). The working, origins ofthe performers and of their language gave the" feeling of sounding the depths oftheir society, of comm [‑ with le peuple, even though we know that all of Thé; songs, all of Bécat’s and the others’, were written by p it sional musicians. The origins were often among the cau but the products came from the hands of skilled professio ,managed by clever entrepreneurs. The bawdy songs of the cafes‐concerts helped make.

into mixing places, where class differences could be a}: papered over. They acted asanoutlet for Parisians’ awa of the vast army of workers on whom they depended, a L the specter of revolution, reinvigorated by the Comm s~ 1871. Class fears were partly discharged at the Ambassa where one could flirt with dangerous sexual and po expression; in an environment that grouped several ,» of client (comfortably dominated by those with money) liberating effects of drink and tobacco, and the frequent :? jection of nonsense songs and refrains which further ' the force of the street references. Georges Riviere, Ra; friend, well understood how singers like Thérésa or J could appeal to the bourgeoisie. In reviewingDegas’sSpl pastel shown in 1877 (P1. 83), he w r o t e that the red‑ figure mu s t besinging “a coarse song, accompanied by ’ gestures,” and then remarked “How this gesture an‑ voice ought to becarefully studied in the silence ofthe boy by a pretty marquise who will cou r t her friends’ bravos she sings ‘Am I a pasteboard woman?”’66 The cafe‐concert let artists and writers associate

performers who were, in a manner of speaking, the" egos. The singer’s or the clown’s act had more than on ' lel with the painting, the musical composition, or the All were one form or another of entertainment, the 5”

m3; u "

canaille but was written by well‐paid professionals like; or Darcier; Manet’s painting included a worker (P1. 7 was destined for a small élite of viewers.

87. Degas, detail of La Chanson du chic"

refrains, odd tu,', ‐therefore a pro-l laudeville thrived rough lively In ,‑ them Manet fo , his quick gras. gy terms of o f fi indmatches there‘f rformers, and for l r monotype, a tea ion of the hierarc nat ter, the compo adebt to Daumiir

hat artists and writ: ‘esistible lure, all ‘1 verent, fractious a" the spirit of oppo morality that m e ? :"limited freedomr; ing their oppositio ul eye on artists . t ). The working‐cl}, guage gave them ? ciety, ofcommu "a that all of Thére’s rewritten by p r o f 1among the canail skilled profession z

:shelped make the lCCS could be pa n, Parisians’ awa ren eydepended, and f: by the Commune .: at the Ambassade t sexual and polit i luped several ClaS‘i sewith money), 3 1dthe frequent i n t Il’llCl’l further d i l u ;es Riviére, Renoi :e Theresa or B6 ‘ing Degas’s splen-l 3 that the red-rob :ompaniedby vulg” his gesture and silence of the bond iriends’ bravos wh ))

's associate with ? speaking, their al more than one par vsition, or the ess linment, the shre ' ; had elements of ff fessionals like He ‘ worker (P1. 77) b“

Chanson du chien (Pl. 5“

88. Degas, The Glove, c.

1or the most part, artists and writers did n o t look at one uothCF That would have brought on t o o much self-aware‑s. TheY looked instead at the performers, the waitresses, ”d the lowlife among the clients. They were like the tourists f 0 went to a fishing Village and looked only at the natives, “1.0 bought engravings of the fishing boats, n o t of the train“at brought them there, and who tried to ignore their fellow uristS» in order to preserve an_“authentic experience. Say‑ , ‘ g this is no t to deny the genuineness of Manet 5 in teres t inoung women alone in their.thoughts and in waitresses at their bS, nor to deny his revelations ofurban tenSions . It is instead a confirm the distance he felt from his cafe’ figures, atdistance .a t did no t exlude sympathy, but that let him maintain his i".ale detachment and demonstrate it to his fellowfashionables. Much the same can be said of Degas’s cafe‐concert pastels,

though his cynical penetration of contemporary foibles is a ‘fferent kind of detachment. For example, his only café‑ .ncert composition that concentrates on customers (P1. 89) u'veS them none of the dignity Manet confers on café clients f"d waitresses, Manet merely hints at possible relationships J-tween his men and wome n while keeping them aloof from ne another. Degas’s small pastel shows lecherous me n hover‑ . g over women of doubtful Virtue, and all the other figures 2 e caricatures, victims of his compulsion to attack society. In J 1Chanson du chien (Pl. 87), the men and women below the " ger are also caricatures, brilliant miniature heads n o t t w o ;‘ ches high in the foreground, and hardly mo r e than half an ; ch in the distance. It is asthough the woman’s animal pos‑ rehad the power to metamorphose her auditors. At the base

“f the composition a pair of dark‐rimmed glasses peers up "over apyramidal snout, and among the tiny heads to the rear ' the profile of a porcine male under a round, yellow hat. To the modern observer there is anoddly familiar aspect to

this crowd milling among trees under the looming presence of a singer on araised platform. Weare reminded of the outdoor Concerts of o u r o w n era in city parks or college grounds. Public concerts by rock musicians, in fact, find their ancestry ~1n the Parisian cafe‐concert. They perpetuate its salient features in their o w n versions of eccentric costumes and gestures, sug‑ gestive body movements, incessantly repeated refrains. They ' also draw much of their material from working‐class culture, and performers scare the bourgeoisie, asdid Thérésa, Darcier, and Bécat, with their vulgarity and their uninhibited private _llves. (Nonetheless, like Theresa, they are greeted by royalty.)

Degas’s vision seems equally modern. In La Chanson du .Chien we even have the familiar experience of being suspended sOmewhere on the boom of a camera that has zoomed in on the performer. This is because his images of café singers have contributed to the way we frame entertainers of ou r 3°Wn period. It is n o t enough simply to say that his forms “and compositions look forward to twentieth‐century ar t . That p13 the customary circular reasoning of a r t historians: anartist is mOdern because he was. . .modern. The real explanation is atDegas invented forms that suited the cafe‐concert, and the

tWO moved together into o u r century.

His m o s t powerful rendering ofa cafe‐concert singer is The Glove (P1. 88), exhibited with the impressionists in 1879; or perhaps we should say that something in o u r o w n culture makes us single it o u t with that particular kind of praise (it is n o t mo r e beautiful n o r mo r e animated than Plate 83, but it is mo r e powerful). Again we have zoomed in on the entertainer asthough aided by the moving camera (how could we have explained where we are located in the te rms of Degas’s generation?) We are extremely close to her, to an absolute stranger who is singing to us. We share the curious experience of the cafe‐concert in which we can be absorbed in the song, hence in aprivate m om e n t with the singer, and yet bepart ofa multitude: the combination of nearness and remoteness that Georg Simmel pinpointed asthe essence of urban life. Degas’s singer has a forceful presence. Her head is l i t from

below, resulting in a potent ugliness that we associate with photographic negatives and with the garish effects of klieg lights, those artificial suns which require the performer’s thick make‐up. (It was Henry Tuckerman who said that Paris and Parisians were characterized above all by a predilection for artifice”) The singer’s mouth is open sowide that o u r o w n facial muscles stretch as we reckon up the loud no t e she is holding. There is a quickness about this picture, a poster‐like immediacy which seizes hold of o u r perception. Arm rises from black circle, and head from black trapezoid; both are set against vertical stripes whose strident tones give rhythm to the silent song. The forearm is suspended at an aggressive angle, its black glove echoing the nighttime void to the right. It arrests motion and commands us to listen to the perpetu‑ ally held note. Everything makes us concentrate on the one event: this w oma n is belting o u t asong, overpowering us. To u s ‐ w e can never escape ou r o w n vision‐she needs only a microphone in that upraised hand to become a contemporary. From her we can trace the performer that marks her age: Thérésa, Yvette Guilbert, Edith Piaf, Judy Garland, janis Joplin.68 Our century has brought with it a vast rise in ente r ‑ tainment, particularly music, which has become one of the basic mo t o r s of industrial society. Paris of the impressionist era set uson that path, and Degas invented forms that invested its earliest images with remarkable animation and enduring force.

91

Notes to pages 59‐92

d the Dreyfus affair: Portrait of the Artist as of Degas’s painting, see Douglas Cooper, The interior. An illustrated program reproduced inif the “re Anti‐Semite,” in the exhibition catalogue The Courtauld Collection (London, 1954), pp. 43ff, and Manet 1986 gives the correct setting for Manet’s . pp. 143 inof” Aflai’ (New York, 1937‐88), pp. 96‐116. Pickvance'1963. ‘ picture, asdoes Chéret’s poster (P1. 79) and arepro‑ pt ion lies ’ 31. Cited in Pickvance 1963. Pickvance reports George duction in Derval 1955, opp. p, 59_ this chap ' Moore’s view that the woman is a “slut” and that 40. See the lithograph exhibited n o . 334 in Carnavalet jamin, bo ’ ter Three the scene takes place in the morning. . 1985, Kracaucr . P 32. Delvau 1862, pp. 250-51. For a straightforward 41. ldentifications summarized in Manet 1983, n o . 2 11 ; t and 30, cCabe 1869, p. 65; McCabe got his figures from account ofabsinthe and its constituent elements, see the barmaid Suzon was identified in Tabarant 1931, i as an Ur ' city Officia]s_ Avenel 1900‐1905, vol. 3, pp. 152‐55, the source p. 412. The Folies appears in numerous con ‐ 1 ‘ but also-lb » All demographic figures from Weber 1899, ed. of the facts that I cite in thlS dlSCUSSiOH. AbSlflthC temporary writings, the best known beingitcommen 63 and Gourdon deGenouillac 1893‐98, vol. 5. was outlawed early in the twentieth century, J,_K, Huysmans’s Croquis parisiens (1880) and Simmel’s i . iguckerman 1867, pp, 25-27. succeeded by presumably less deleterious drinks Maupassant'sBelami(1885).l‐Iowever, bothauthors 3' 93), by 4 Kraeauer 1937. For Offenbach one should consult like Pernod. For an intelligent study of the whole had a writer’s interest in exaggerating its role asatude. Hed .. 150 Paris 1980. issue of drink in this era, see Michael Marrus, prostitutes’ market. l‘s underlyr . kracauel’ 1937, p, 176. “Social Drinking in the Belle Epoque,” journal Of 42. T ] . Clark did soat first (Clark 1977), flatly calling :s to the men ,. Paris 1980, pp. 142‐46, recounts the political Social History 7 (winter 1974): 115‐41. her a“whore.” His book (Clark 1985), however, is 145. difficulties Offenbachencountered with this operet- 33. By Maxime Du Camp, cited in Barrows 1979. hi 3more nuanced argument and hecorrectly hedges: Dter One, P. ta giving grist to Kracauer’s mill, although else‐ her canny article, BarrowsdealsWith the temperance “a woman in a cafe‐concert, selling drinks and firefited fro , where he somewhat naively denies the validity of movement of the 18705, the covert and public oranges, and mos t probably for sale herself‐or “Helm“ 13an ‘7" Kracauer's political analysis. attempts to control drink, and Zola’s opposition tO believed to be so by some of her customers" (p. ml and th°~ ' ' Kracauer 1937, p. 289. such hypocrisy. She also has in preparation abook 253). The relevant tradition of the damederomproir is lack Ofinvd when in Rome in 1885, Debussy admitted that he dealing with all aspects of cabarets and cafes. extensively discussed in connection with the Bar in isguisc forf L was homesick and yearned “ t o see Manet and hear 34. Even in reproduction the strip of canvas Manet Ross 1982. Two, P' 34 Offenbach.” Cited in Faris 1980 p. 221 . added to the right of this picture shows readily, 43. Mortier 1875‐85, vol. 3, pp. 37‐38, entry for 4 Baudelaircf‘ See the appendix devoted to documents about the its edge running up the back of this figure. This February 1876. Mortier’s volumes give a good )m home 4“ composition and its censorship in Manet 1983. painting was once part of the Winterthur café running account of the Folies, e.g., 1874 (vol. 1,pp.me; to see Citron 1961, vol. 2, p. 318 and passim. See also composition (P1. 70); bothwere substantially altered 283m and 1877 (vol. 4, pp, 140m,This book has an ld’ and yet to Francoise Cachin’s remarks in Manet 1983, no . 90. after the original canvas was cut in t w o (analy51s of introduction by Offenbach. are a few Of Identified by Marilyn Brown (Brown 1978), who this complex history in Manet 1986. pp- 65‐71)- 44. An interpretation first proposed by Hans jantzen, ident, pass made anastute analysis of the picture’s combination Such alterations have n o t deterred Manet specialists “Edouard Manet’s ‘Bar aux Folies‐Bergere,’ ” in 1 ‘Le Pein, . ‘ of naturalismand allegory. Her book (Brown 1985) from claiming that these t w o , and other café Essays in Honor of George Swarzenski, ed. Oswald re 1964" isthe first thorough social history of the gypsy and paintings, including The Plum (PL 75), are render- Goetz (Chicago, 1951). 146' . the artistic Boheme in nineteenth-century French ings of specific places that they attempt to name. 45. See the discussion of Simmel in Chapter Two.borderingon 21 art For The Old Musician, see also Hanson 1977, Much as one would like to agree, the fact that Clark invokes Simmel when he writes of this ‘, :reatment q ' 61‐66 and Reff 1982, pp, 170-91, Manet altered the pictures’ backgrounds in rework‐ picture (Clark 1985, pp. 253‐54)- He also “ 5 6 5 the l The Curio} gap“ 1855 p, 8, ing them and omitted all precise clues tOlocation (at stronger t e r m “alienation” andbelieves that Manet’s l aXIS’ b-Ut , For these aspects of Haussmannization, see Clark least, none has been revealed) seems to argue for the painting, in both subject and form, indicates a truly iingle, JUd 1‘,‘ ' 1985 ch 1 reverse. profound malaise in his society and a deep crisis in ofsmall pie "3“ . The lvariou-s ties with earlier ar t are summarized in 35. In the sword hilt that hangs on the brass rack to the French art . 555 the m ‘ Reff 1982 pp 171‐91. rear, Manet may have intended a reference to the 46. Common, however, in fashion illustrations from ‘ nd cabinet. Kin 1868 p: 113. figure derived from Neapolitan comedy, Polichi‐ the 18305 onward in Which, by discarding conven‐ ll 16Necessrt . Delgau 1867 p. 64. These words immediately nelle. ASTheodore Reffhas shown (“The Symbol- tional perspective, an“illogical” mirror view shows i cmmsm 16 i . recede those I have cited in epigraph at the ism of Manet’s Frontispiece Etching,” Burlington the rear of a hat or cloak, e.g., “Petit courrier des 327‐28' The‐ ECinning of Chapter Two. Magazine 104 [May 1962]: I32‐37)» Manet intro‐ dames, Modes deLongchamp,” Modes deParis (20 9 ° " Pothdt Bagrrows 1979. duced his album of etchings of 1862 with a April 1835). ‘

- ‘1james 1875‐76. P~190. surrogate of the artist, aPolichinelle whose sword. 47 , Except for Plates 83and 85, exhibited in 1877, the \ ’ rabeth Lanmt Constantin 1872 p. 108: “. . .e t l’on neverrait plus one Of his leading attributes, hangs nearby. Th‘s dates for all these are disputed by specialists. It is, 1830‐ 1890} . dans la capitale du monde civilisé, l’ignoble chope etched figure bears striking resemblance to the man agreed that the largest number were done between

- - remplacer 1adive bouteille.” in Cafe-Concert. Further, “Polichinelle” in the slang 1875 and 1878. . reparingap bhw Edouard Noel and Edmond Stoullig, eds., Les of Manet’s day meant “an amusmg and eccentric 48. Changes in the laws pertaining to entertainment he, has l-dcn’ I . Annales du theatre et de la musique 3 (1877): 602. man” (DClVau 1866, tl-V-)- were regularly noted in newspapers and in guide‘mitteemP _ lsaacson 1982 36- HOHiS C13Y50“ (in aPUth lecture, February 1980) books. They are conveniently summarized in Gour‑he)’ were 1111; Rewald 1973 -pp- 430‐31 and passim. first raised this issue in connection with Manet’s don deGenouillac1893‐98, vol. 5, pp_ 263‐67 and awe busmcss_ _Grar'ia 1971 pp 87‐88. t w o cafe‐concert pictures, concluding that they passim. ‘ 31. , ' Gauthier‐Lathuille's memoir of this encounter is represented brasserie: a femmes. Subsequently, 49_ joanne 1870, P- 616. Cafe-concert staffs, average , 63' ‘. cited in Tabarant 1947, pp. 352 ‐53. The painting Theresa Ann Gronberg (Gronberg 19843) Phthhetl salaries, and costs are summarized by Emile Mathi‑16‐19. The . uni-u has recently been studied by Bradley Collins (Manet a detailed analysis of clandestine prostitution as it eu, cited in Caradec and Weill 1980, pp, 12‐16. :rring’s “ S t “ 1985) who summarizes previous discussions and might relate to impressionist painting, and she also 50. Cited in Shapiro 1980, p. 155. it is Shapiro who posed by ‘ ‐ adds perceptive observations. stated that the t w o Manets show brasserit‘s afemmes. identified Ducarre asthe subject of The Impresario. 1 ma n presu l . The site is described in Riviere 1921, pp. 140 ‐44, Intelligent though both interpretations are, the The sheet of studiesis reproduced in Boggs 196; .>yresemblance ? 187. internal workings of the paintings do n o t hear them (her fig- 94), COHCCUOH “filmown- SFUd'CS, and 01] ting card Ph ' ~For Renoir’s social ideals see below, the last section out. are dated c. 1876‐77- Shapiro 315° identified the UICY 1985, P- of Chapter Five. 37. joel lsaacson puts it well when he says of Manet and singer Libert as the subject of another sheet of “Y oflifc,” . The friendship is recorded in Proust 1913, p. 110 . Degas that “seriousness of purpose takes the form studies of the same date (his fig. 4, P. 156). Wl'th 0" Cl -. The painting probably does n o t adhere to a of acontent rcsPectful of human dignity Within the 51. Letter to Henri Lerolle, 4 December 1883, in .75. particular geometric scheme, but its overall propor- compromising and precarious urban world they Lemes de Degas, ed. Marcel Ouérin (Paris: rid more co tions (2.3) are duplicated in some of the subdivi_ chose to depict.” (lsaacson 1982, p. 110.) , 1945), p. 75, The apt phrase la Patti de la chope,_ t words for D. Sions which additionally, make use of a few 38. For the institution, Derval 1955, and for Manet S referring to the great soprano Adelina Patti, lsiis Interior (Pl. repeated inteivals. painting, Manet 1986, pp. 76‐83. My information Alfred DeIVau’s (Dclvau 1867, p. 180), but is fre- l l for him. It s i . For example, Reff 1982, no . 18. I prefer the more derives also from posters, photographs, advertise- quently credited to Louis Veuillot. _ ‘ ‘ tion, say Van guarded view of Theresa Ann Gronberg (Gronberg ments , and music sheets, aswell asfrom contem‐ 52. Paul Foueher, Enm' ( o u r et Jardin, 1867, Cited in DWP, estrang 1984). Although she calls Manet’s woman an porary guide books. . . . . . Alméras 1933, p. 422. In Clark 1985, pp. .216‐29, zmi t i s i n , Whl “urban slut,” far t o o strong a phrase in my view, 39. That there were t w o spaces With different actiVities there is an acute analySis of the working-class came more a she also shows why it would be difficult to affix a and. mises-en-sténe for long escaped the notice of origins of café songs, _ , ‘ . 3553)’ Wthh a label to such a person. ar t historians, who confused the interpretation of 53. She does n o t quite look like Theresa, but Michael press: Linda " ~50defined in Delvau1866, q.v. For the early history Manet’s picture by trying to adjust it to the wrong Shapiro (Shapiro 1980) convmcmgly relates astudy

309

9

IO .

I I . 12 . 13.

15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

308

and Warhol, to say nothingofI-Iemingway, Orwell, and Benjamin. Benjamin 1973, p. 37. Bazin 1833, vol. 2, p. 308: “pre’fet depolice" (police commissioner). Moers 1960, p. 264. All Manet scholars have discussed Baudelaire, but the first profound discussion of Manet astheflzincur is Nils Sandblad's (Sandblad 1954). The best recen t account of the links between Manet and Baudelaire is by Druick and Zegers: see below, n o t e 15. This interpretation owes agreat deal to Benjamin’s famous essays collected in Benjamin 1973. Reff 1976, p. 104. Since chas’s day, the painting in question has been demoted from Cranach's work to that of his Followers. More likely wit, since Degas was the last artist to be unaware of what he was doing. And he got away with the suppression of the leg, since no Degas specialist has drawn attention to it! Degas also eliminated any legs under the tables in his Absinthe (PI. 76). Fournel 1858, p. 263. Proust 1913, p. 29. Proust 1913, pp. 39‐40. Themultiplemeanings ofclierries (rcrixcs) in Manet’s era Iiave been confirmed by the historian Francois Caradec (personal communication, 1986). Lagnignc is a common variety of sour cherry, but the verb guig/icr mean t “ t o give a sidelong glance," in the sense ofa malevolent look. Hence to have laguignc and to Iiave la (arise both mean t to have bad luck. Douglas Druick and Peter Zegers, “Maiiet’s ‘Bal‑ loon:’ French Diversion, The Fete de I’Enipereur 1862," Print Collector’s Newsletter 14 (May‐june 1983): 38‐46. See the first chapter of Sandblad 1954. Whitehurst 1873, vol. 2, p. 95, and Tuckerinan 1867, p. 56. Tuckerman 1867, pp. 156f. Tuckermaii is n o t quite the prude that my citations might suggest, and, moreover, he so fervently wished the French to oppose Louis Napoleon that he interpreted their liedonisni as political submis‑ sion. This colored his perceptions, since hebelieved their saturation in the artificial and [ I N theatrical was merely an extension of the Emperor’s tinselly, shallow regime: “Simplicity and earnestness are the normal traits of efficient character, whether deve‑ loped in action or Art , in sentiment or reflection; and manufactured verse, vegetation and complex‑ ions indicate a faith in appearances and a divorce from reality, which, in political interests, tend to compromise, to theory, and to acquiescence in a military regime and an embellished absolutism." (Tuckeriiian 1867, p. 157.) Moers 1960, passini. Baudelaire 1964, p. 11 . Sandblad 1954, p. 63. Wechsler 1982, and Isaacson 1982. Art historians first began commenting on this by focusing 011 specific borrowings, such asDegas's from Dauniier, or Manet's from popular illustra‑ tions, and subsequently by broader inquiries into the whole phenomenon. See Reff 1976 and Hanson 1977, and for broader studies, Beatrice Farwell, ed, The Cult of Images (Santa Barbara, exliib. cat . , 1977), lsziac501i 1982, and Ross 1982. For example, all ofhis brothel scenes (Pl. 115), and such paintings asSulleiug (PI. 58), MmeDiets-Monin (Chicago, Ar t Institute), or The Stock Exchange (PI. 56). Degas himself referred to Lavater, the famous phrenologist (Reff 1976, p. 217). The group is discussed by Ronald Pickvance in Degas 1879 (Edinburgh, exhib. ca t . , 1979, nos.

Notes to pages 33‐58

55~6o, and in Thomson 1987, pp. 27-‐30. Benjamin 1973, p. 41. Benjamin was probably thinking of the passage from Balzac’s Thém'ic dcla dcnmrt/ic (A Theory ofBearing) which has recently been cited in Wechsler 1982, i. 22 : “The observer is incontestably the man of genius. All human inven‑ tions come from an analytic observation in which the mind acts with anincredible rapidity ofinsiglit. Gall, Lavater, Mesmer, ( I u v i e r . . .Bernard de I’alis‑ sy, the precursor of Buffoii. . .Newton, and also the great painter and the great musician, are all observers. . .thosc sublime birds ofprey who, while rising to high regions, have the gift ofseeing clearly in matters here below, who can at the same time abstract and specify, make exac t analyses and just syntheses." As early as 1833 the fléni'ur was likened to a policeman. See above, no t e 5. Fournel 1858, pp. 269‐71. Goncourt 1956, vol. 11, entry for 22 August 1875. Duranty in Le Rea/{snug 15 March 1856, cited in Crouzet 1964, p. 441; the Goncourts in their journal, May 1859, cited in Caraniaschi 1971, p. 43. L’Ai/cnn' dc la science, pcnsécx de 1848 (Paris, 1890), pp. 192. 194~95‑ Delvau 1867, p. 78: “belles de nui t . ” Delvau names five similar cafes along this boulevard, and his description ofthe Cafe deMadrid could serve asthe legend for Degas’s composition. On its terrace, he writes, “from 11o’clock at night to 1a .m. : swarms of young beauties it doesn’t take t o o much imagination to call them beauties ofthe night‐display themselves like espaliers on this terrace where, with the pretext ofhaving ice cream or Bavarian cream, they wait for galant cavaliers to offer an arm to accompany them to the ne x t Biqnon.” See Chapter One, p. 18. Lemoisne 1946‐49, vol. 1, p. 119: “ U n tableau est une chose qui exige autant de rouerie, de malice et de vice que la perpétration d’un crime, faites faux et ajoutez un accent de nature.” When reviewing the impressionist exhibition of 1881 (Huysnians 1883, “L’Exposition des Indepen‑ dants en 1881,“ p. 233). See Kirk Varnedoe’s analysis in Caillebotte 1976‑ 77, no- 47‑ Boggs 1962, p. 18, gives a very perceptive analysis of this picture which underlies mine, although we are n o t in entire agreement. David R. Smith, “Rembrandt’s Early Double Portraits and the Dutch Conversation Piece," Arl Bulletin 64 (june 1982): 259‐88, calls attention to Dutch prototypes for paintings which disclose “an interrupted m o ‑ m e n t of domestic intimacy" with hints of tension. Reff 1976, pp. 200‐38. It is t r ue that Theodore Reff and some other a r t historians who specialize in Impressionism have reinforced the relationship to naturalism, but in an influential tex t , Cosar Grai'ia accepted the idea that the impressionists painted their surroundings in a rather unreflectiiig way. (Irai' ia does n o t condemn Impressionism, but rather, praises it for being “a peripatetic, treniulous art , thoroughly occasional and typically free of philosophical proclamations." He refuses to regard iiiipressionisni as a pictorial form of naturalism, for “not only was iiaturalisni exclusively a literary movemen t , it was also the

Second Empire. Impressionism, on the other hand, was, quite obviously, an a r t created by men who felt socially comfortable and politically unconcerned and who celebrated with a kind of amiable lyricism the bourgeois pleasures surrounding their lives.” (Grai'ia 1971, p. 74.) Because they do n o t understand the real significance of the Impressionists” detach‑ m e n t , Grana and other observers do n o t see behind

48

56.

the glitter oftheir painted was a member of the “ In Simmel 1971, pp ;43_49 and 3a Simmel sconception lies behind (I:4 ready utilized in this Clmpter‘ “rSie 7c and .Wa|tcr Benjamin. both t“ l ft” admirers ofhis (Kracaner 1937 and B ‘ . Eirai'ia’s brilliant and sometimes 3,03 Hllllpl‘CSSlOlllsnl as an Urbm A“ F1' Simmel to task, but ( i r a i i a ISthe first“commentator on In to have. linked Siniinel’s idea of (he Iiiipress‘ioliisin (p, 93), byWay “l'tlieir d or degage' attitude. Ht- clues (h i , hes‘ “Chm“ hedenies Siininel’s underlyingdefiniticiiinufili'51?“ t1v1ty" and its ties to the iiioiiev econoi 0 Objec‑ Sininiel 1971, p. 145. I n y ' See above, Chapter One, p_ . seem to have benefited from familiarity with h writings ol tlng/ltillfllf}. Beuiaiiiin. in turn (1 t c both from Simmel and the [hint-Hrs when Ii raws that the seeming lack ofiiivolvemeiit offldniunmcs detective is a disguise for their peiicti’atio ( a nd above, Chapter Two, p. 34), n (SOC For exam ile, in Baudela ~' ‘~ « . “ To beaivav from liollfkl'xlilttl‘ln’lfuls (Olinmhmn:. « y t t to fcel oneself everywhere at home: to see the world, to beat the cen t r e ofthe world, and yet t o remain hidden from the world‐such are a few ofthe slightest pleasures of those independent. passionate, impartial m‑ tures. . . ." (From “Le I’cintre de la vie modcme ” 1863, in Baudelaire 1964, p. 9.) ' Simmel 1971, p. 146. And Degas’s wit, bordering onthe ruse, isrevealed by the illogical treatment of the wall above the man's shoulder. The curio cabinet and the table share a common axis, but the wall seems to bend back at another angle, judging by the frame that holds thatjunible ofsnialI pieces. The rusesucceeds because Degas uses the man's head to hide the juncture of wall and cabinet. “Accident and the Necessity of Art,"]oumal qf Aesthetics and Art Criticism 16 (1957): 18‐31. Simmel 1971, pp. 27‐28. The aptiiess ofSimmcI's formulation has been pointed to in Clark 1985, pp. 238‐39. The phrase is Elizabeth latimer's, in Frame in the Nine/tenth Century, 1830‐ 1890 (Chicago, 1892), p. 176. Marilyn Brown, preparing apublication 011DCgaS'S Purtmilx in anQtfitc. has identified the members Of the municipal committee in Pain who purchased the picture in 1874. They were largely erCm Repub‑ licans and progressive businessmen. Simmel 1971, p. 331. Fournel 1858, p. 263. Reff l976. pp. 116‐19. The print on the wall reproduces). F. Herring‘s “Steeple ChaseCracks. The woman was posed h)" “ w model Emm; Dobigiiy, and the 111.111 presumably bx Equn Duranty (judged by rL‘st‘IlllllJllf‘fl' For meat-sung parallels with visiting card photographs 0 (w persons, see McCauley 10551 P- 1,6" . A] “Urbanisni asa w a y ofllfkt” (Of'g‘ '938) m Reiss, ed., Louis Il'tiili on Cities and 5004114}? Chica o, 1964), l 75- u f‘Estraigigement” hnd more commonly 51:11:23 ment" are the right words for Degflsv felt ation” [ i o n f ’ Except for his Interior (P l 52h 5362‘ch is t o o strong a t e r m for him. It should 1:rEdval' for the n e x t generation. 5.1." V “ " 00g}! 3: uld be Munch. Degass o w n estrangeincut fdovimlent linked to Iiisianti‐seiiiitism. Mm.“ mm?reclusive. after 1890, ashebecame more and "firi’ustasihis' SCL‘ [ he pL‘llCUllIlllg CSSJ)‘ \\'l]]t‘l1Lil’PC‘Tnifl‘ “Degas book was going to press: l.llltl'.l N o t ) ,

also builds upo

32>.