La Rue Mosnier aux drapeaux

On June 30, 1878, France threw its first national holiday since the disasters of the previous decade, the defeat by Prussia in 1871 and the bloody collapse of the Paris Commune that followed. The day was billed as a celebration of peace, timed to the world's fair then filling Paris, and the city hung out the tricolour. Manet painted the scene from an upstairs window on the rue Mosnier, flags drooping in the flat light over the ordinary traffic below. Off to the left he placed a man on crutches with one leg gone, most likely a veteran of that lost war, making his slow way past the bunting while a labourer's ladder leans nearby.