Le Bon Bock

By 1873 Edouard Manet was used to being mocked. His Olympia had scandalised Paris eight years before, and the public treated him as a provocateur. Then he showed this: a genial engraver named Emile Bellot, pipe in hand, pausing over a glass of beer. It was the hit of the Salon, the first painting of Manet's the crowds actually liked. He had just been to Holland and steeped himself in Frans Hals, and it shows in the warm browns and the loose, confident brushwork. One friend teased that the beer in the glass was really Haarlem beer, meaning the whole thing was pure Hals. Bellot sat for it dozens of times, and later founded a drinking club named after the picture.