A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

In the second half of the nineteenth century most French women in the labor force were young single members of the popular classes. Many of those who worked in certain of the classic female professions in Paris, such as the needle trades, were suspected of being prostitutes...

Félix Guattari was writing about Gérard Fromanger during what he called the années d’hiver, the ‘winter years’ of the early 1980s, years marked by a certain retreat for Guattari himself and for the painter, whose successive changes of style had flouted critical...

There is a dynamic relationship between depicted light – the light effects represented in Impressionist paintings – and the inherent luminosity of the materials and methods of handling used by the painters. Understanding this relationship is crucial in evaluating the modernity and meanings of Impressionist painting. The physical properties of their chosen materials facilitated...

~The earliest known works by Manet are copies after the masters—certainly an acceptable and appropriate beginning for an aspiring young artist. A great many of his copies must have disappeared, but what remains attests to Couture’s guidance toward masters of painterly technique : Titian, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Delacroix, and Velasquez...

~Two years after the show at La Vie Moderne, Manet declared he was a “philosopher of the Folies-Bergère”: he showed the Bar at the Folies-Bergère (fig. 137) at...

Even a casual glance at successive editions of guide books to Paris, from their beginnings in the 1840s to the end of the “Belle Epoque,” reveals the striking truth: leisure and entertainment took an ever-increasing place in the life of Paris...