Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
The Café-Concert
Edouard Manet French
Not on view
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.
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