Cafe-Concert by Manet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: The Café-Concert

Artist: Edouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris)

Date: ca. 1879

Geography: Country of Origin France

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 18 5/8 × 15 3/8 in. (47.3 × 39.1 cm)
Framed: 25 7/8 × 22 7/8 × 3 3/4 in. (65.7 × 58.1 × 9.5 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland (37.893)


Manet chose to depict the crowd at the Cabaret de Reichshoffen, offering only a glimpse of the main attraction, the singer Elsa La Polonaise, who is reflected in a mirror in the upper left corner. Composed almost entirely of cropped and overlapping figures, the painting calls attention to the diverse mix of people at the café-concert, including a working-class woman with a cigarette at left, a waitress mid-drink just behind, and a bourgeois gentleman at right. Despite the cramped environment, there is no social interaction among these figures, who all look in different directions.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/844630