Edouard Manet (1832-1883)

Music in the Tuileries Gardens,
1862

Manet's first major painting of modern
city life depicts a fashionable Parisian
crowd. It includes Manet himself on
the far left and such friends as the
poet Charles Baudelaire and the painter
Henri Fantin-Latour, gathered in the
Tuileries, apparently for a concert.
Several figures engage with our gaze, as
if we too are part of the social throng.

Oil on canvas

NG3260. Sir Hugh Lane Bequest, 1917