After the Service at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Christmas 1890

Holy Trinity was the American church in Paris, built from donations and consecrated in 1886. Its congregation of heirs, diplomats, businessmen and journalists was a spectacle in itself. Harper's Weekly, the New York magazine, told tourists that missing the crowd leaving the service meant missing one of the sights of the city.

Béraud puts us among the onlookers on the pavement after the Christmas service of 1890, with snow on the branches, furs and muffs, carriages at the kerb and the flags of France and the United States at the church door. The picture was commissioned by James Gordon Bennett Junior, owner of the New York Herald, who had launched a Paris edition of his paper. He is the man in the black coat and top hat at the edge of the scene, smoking. Béraud painted it in 1901, 11 years after the day it records.