Femme lisant

It looks like a snapshot of café life. A woman in gloves and a warm coat pauses over an illustrated magazine, a glass of beer at her marble table, as if caught at an outdoor terrace on a cool afternoon. Almost none of it is real. Manet built the scene in his studio, and the blossoming greenery behind her is actually another of his own paintings, propped up as a backdrop. He worked this way in his last years, when illness kept him close to home, yet the brushwork here is as quick and light as anything the younger Impressionists were doing. The café he had in mind was the Nouvelle-Athènes near Pigalle, where a couple of tables were kept for him and his friends, Degas and Monet and Zola among them.