Musik in den Tuilerien

Twice a week in the 1860s a band played in the Tuileries gardens, and fashionable Paris came to sit under the trees and be seen. Manet painted that crowd in 1862, and instead of one story he gave a scatter of faces, many of them people he knew. His brother stands near the centre in white trousers. The poet Baudelaire, who argued that modern city life deserved to be painted as seriously as ancient myth, is tucked in among the standing men, and the composer Offenbach sits to the right. Manet put himself at the far left edge, half cut off by the frame, holding a cane. The paint is loose and unfinished looking, with dabs standing in for hats and faces, which is part of why this garden concert is often called one of the first modern paintings.