We are in the warmly lit interior of a café where a pale-skinned woman stands in profile at a dark wooden bar that extends away from us in this horizontal painting. The woman stands behind the bar to our left and faces our right. She has upswept brown hair and wears a navy-blue dress. The entire scene is loosely painted, and the elevated area just beyond the woman is especially loose, built up with thick strokes of seafoam green, black, and daubs of white. A cluster of vertical amber-colored, brown, and light grass-green strokes suggest bottles sitting along its top. Another object, perhaps a tall chalice, sits on the top of the bar, which is painted with a swipe of white paint. Crimson-red and pine-green daubs just beyond it suggest flowers. The room is painted in shades of slate blue, tan, butter and mustard yellow, with sage green creating cool shadows. A column near the center of the room, beyond the bar, divides the scene vertically. To our the right is a piece of wooden furniture with a small table and chair placed before it. A tall brass chandelier hanging above has three arms curving upward to support silvery globes. A dark blue object, perhaps a hat, hangs on the wall nearby. To the right of the chandelier is a roughly painted rectangle filled with soft blue, white, and pink shapes that suggests a mirror or window into another room. In the background, the lower half of the far corner is stone blue and cinnamon brown. The painting is dated in the lower left, “Juin 1881.”
Read the visual description

We are in the warmly lit interior of a café where a pale-skinned woman stands in profile at a dark wooden bar that extends away from us in this horizontal painting. The woman stands behind the bar to our left and faces our right. She has upswept brown hair and wears a navy-blue dress. The entire scene is loosely painted, and the elevated area just beyond the woman is especially loose, built up with thick strokes of seafoam green, black, and daubs of white. A cluster of vertical amber-colored, brown, and light grass-green strokes suggest bottles sitting along its top. Another object, perhaps a tall chalice, sits on the top of the bar, which is painted with a swipe of white paint. Crimson-red and pine-green daubs just beyond it suggest flowers. The room is painted in shades of slate blue, tan, butter and mustard yellow, with sage green creating cool shadows. A column near the center of the room, beyond the bar, divides the scene vertically. To our the right is a piece of wooden furniture with a small table and chair placed before it. A tall brass chandelier hanging above has three arms curving upward to support silvery globes. A dark blue object, perhaps a hat, hangs on the wall nearby. To the right of the chandelier is a roughly painted rectangle filled with soft blue, white, and pink shapes that suggests a mirror or window into another room. In the background, the lower half of the far corner is stone blue and cinnamon brown. The painting is dated in the lower left, “Juin 1881.”

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Bon Bock Café

Style of Edouard Manet

Date
1881
Medium
oil on wood
Dimensions
overall: 26.6 x 34.9 cm (10 1/2 x 13 3/4 in.) framed: 47.3 x 55.2 x 7.3 cm (18 5/8 x 21 3/4 x 2 7/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1970.17.38
Credit line
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection
Time span
1876 to 1900
Department
CF

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • French
  • Impressionist
  • French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century. Part II: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
  • taverns/cafes/inns
  • genre
  • Bon Bock Cafe
Provenance

Sir Victor Schuster [1885-1962], London, by 1942.[1] Capt. Edward H. Molyneux [1891-1974], Paris, by 1952; sold 15 August 1955 to Ailsa Mellon Bruce, New York; bequest 1970 to NGA. [1]Lent by Schuster to the 1942 exhibition at the National Gallery in London, _Nineteenth Century French Paintings_, no. 25.

Inscription

lower left: Juin 1881

NGA object ID 52182. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.