How to Read Paintings: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Édouard Manet
A painting of ambiguous beauty and unsettling dynamics
This work made by Édouard Manet is in many ways a culmination of the central theme of his career: the fascinating and perplexing relationship between painted illusion and real life.
The painting shows a counter at a popular nightspot where a barmaid has come to serve a customer. On the right side of the painting, we can see the reflection of this exchange as it’s reflected in the large mirror that covers the entire back wall. The man she is serving wears a top hat and a moustache.
Manet’s brilliance is that he leaves the image open to perpetual questioning. The barmaid, for instance, maintains an ambiguous demeanour that hovers somewhere between assertiveness and disenchantment. She stands and meets our gaze, yet draws away from it too. Such uncertainty keeps the work fresh, even a century-and-a-half after it was made.
We are inside the cabaret music hall known as the Folies-Bergère, located in Paris just a little south of Montmartre. When it first opened its doors in 1869, the Folies-Bergère was a modern pleasure venue where a typical evening might include ballet, pantomime, operetta and animal acts.
