Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862)
This is one of the first paintings of the Impressionist painter Edouard Manet. It proudly hangs in the National Gallery, London. It is an early example of Manet's painterly style, inspired by Frans Hals and Diego Velázquez, and it is a harbinger of his life-long interest in the subject of leisure.
While the picture was not regarded as finished by some, the suggested atmosphere imparts a sense of what the Tuileries gardens were like at the time; one may imagine the music and conversation. Here Manet has depicted his friends, artists, authors, and musicians who take part, and he has included a self-portrait among the subjects. Included in the image are Manet himself, Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Henri Fantin-Latour, Jacques Offenbach, and Manet's brother Eugène.
The painting is regarded as one of the first great paintings of modern urban life, and what it shows is a bustling middle-class crowd of professionals and artists at their leisure. It is also representative of a nation, transformed in part by the policies of Napoleon III into an economically competitive atate ready to enjoy its new found success and confidence.
