Woman Reading

Notes from the museum

During the late nineteenth century, Parisian cafés were the gathering places of artists and writers and were ideal locations for observing the urban scene. Many Impressionist paintings depict the Café Nouvelle-Athènes on the rue Pigalle, where two tables were reserved for Édouard Manet and his circle—a group that included the painters Edgar Degas , Claude Monet , Camille Pissarro , and Pierre-Auguste Renoir , and the writers Charles Baudelaire and Émile Zola . At first glance, this fashionably dressed young woman appears to have been captured sitting at a favorite café: the marble tabletop, beer mug, and magazine attached to a wooden bar suggest such a setting, and her heavy clothing and kid gloves indicate that she is at an outdoor table and that the weather is cool. However, the floral background is actually one of Manet's paintings and the café a re-creation in his studio. Woman Reading is one of the most Impressionist of Manet’s images; the quick, free brushstrokes and light colors are characteristic of his technique late in his career. Painted only a few years before his death, this work admirably captures a fleeting moment, the sense of modern life that Manet and his contemporaries sought to represent.

Text: Art Institute of Chicago (open access). Our full story for this work is coming soon.

Slow Look

1. The whole picture Let your eyes wander. Where do they want to rest?
2. The light Find the brightest spot. What is it showing you?
3. The edges Look at what is half cut off at the borders.
4. One small detail Choose one tiny thing and stay with it for a while.
5. The whole picture again Step back. Has it changed for you?

About Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

Painter profile →