The café was an ideal social place for Parisians to enjoy the company of friends, to relax, to delve into the world of politics and other intellectual interests, and to escape the city. According to Robert Herbert, the author of Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society, “the café was the tangible meeting place of Parisian society” (Herbert 65). Claude Monet created a series of café paintings that portray the café as free-and-easy environment in which free thinkers, writers and artists, and ordinary citizens could come together to experience the diversity and prosperity of nineteenth century France. For Manet, the Café was a symbol of everything that was free from the restraints of traditional thought, and it epitomized modern Parisian life. Manet claimed that the convivial atmosphere of the café was the ideal city center for the formulation of new ideas as he said, “they kept our wits sharpened, they encouraged us with stores of enthusiasm that for weeks and weeks kept us up until the final shaping if the idea was accomplished. From them we emerged tempered more highly, with a firmer will, with our thoughts clearer and more distinct” (qtd. Dees). Manet studied the café and its patrons as symbols of modern life and of progressive thought. Not only had the café become more popular among painters, writers, other intellectuals and the cultured elite, but the café had also gained popularity among the working class in the latter part of the nineteenth century. They often turned to the café for food, drink, and camaraderie. Dees, author of The Role of the Parisian Café in the Emergence of Modern Art described the café as a place for the common people where “During the course of the day, a laborer could visit the café before work, at noon for an aperitif, after lunch for a digestif, and after work during the “hour of absinthe.” Between 1840 and 1870, alcoholic consumption tripled” (Dees 28). As we can see, many social groups converged together in the Parisian café to create an environment that was likely as diverse as it was animated. Manet painted his first portrayal of the café as a setting of social gathering, At the Café, in 1878.
Manet’s At the Café captures a crowded and lively looking café scene in which a small family of three appears to be the focus of the painting. Seated behind a table in the center of the painting are a woman, a man, and possibly their daughter. The woman gazes out into the distance and appears to be looking in the direction of the viewer; her delicate right hand pulls away the back of a chair from the bar and turns it toward us. Herbert tells us that this may be “a gesture we can interpret as a delicate invitation to come and sit” (Herbert 69). Manet illustrates the social nature of the café by inviting the viewer to become a part of the café’s family. In Manet’s paintings, we see a cafe that is quite different from the café that Van Gogh, the absinthe addict, painted. The bright and natural colors Manet uses in his paintings are very different from the unnatural greens and yellows Van Gogh uses to depict his cafés. We feel welcome to join Manet’s café visitors because of their warmth and inviting nature.
In Chez le Père Lathuille, 1879, we see the makings of what appears to be un rendezvous d’amoureux. A waiter stands a few feet away from the café table, as he anxiously waits for the perfect moment to fill his final customers’ cups with coffee. A fashionable and enchanting young man attempts to woo a reticent, well-to-do woman who appears to be in the process of finishing her meal. We notice that this “bohemian” man (Herbert 68) lacks both a meal and a chair; he is foreign to the woman in the picture. Manet chose to depict the café as a place where strangers interacted with each other unabashedly, thereby allowing us to experience the sense of adventure and sociability surrounding the café in Chez le Père Lathuille.
In his Woman Reading in a Café, 1879, Manet depicts the café as a center of fashion and social display as a modishly dressed woman reads what is most likely an illustrated journal, perhaps La Vie moderne, that would have published pithy accounts of fashion trends and would have provided its readers insight into Parisian life à-la-mode. (Herbert 67) Woman Reading in a Café is sketchy in its composition. The painting appears to have been done quickly, and thus, epitomizes the energy and chic nature of the Parisian café.