The Old Musician

Manet painted this in 1862, while the neighbourhood around his Paris studio was being torn down. Under Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann was cutting his wide new boulevards through the old city, and the poor quarters were levelled to make room, pushing their inhabitants out. The people gathered here are those cast-offs. The seated musician at the centre was a real man, Jean Lagrène, who led a local band, and around him Manet lined up a girl with a baby, a boy in a straw hat, a ragpicker, a man in a battered top hat. They do not interact so much as stand assembled for us, life-size, against a bare grey ground. It is one of the largest canvases Manet ever made.