L'Absinthe

A woman sits in a Paris café with a glass of absinthe, staring at nothing, beside a man who looks away. Degas called it simply In a Café. Critics called it ugly, disgusting and a blow to morality.

The story behind the painting

Degas painted the work between 1875 and 1876; Wikidata gives 1875. Its original title was Dans un Café, In a Café, a name still often used, and other early titles were A sketch of a French Café and Figures at Café. Only when it was shown in London in 1893 did it become L'Absinthe. The setting is the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes in Paris. The models were real people: the actress Ellen Andrée, who also posed for Manet, and the painter and etcher Marcellin Desboutin.

What to look for

A woman and a man sit side by side, and both seem lethargic and lonely. The man, wearing a hat, looks to the right, off the edge of the canvas. The woman, more formally dressed in a fashionable dress and hat, stares vacantly downward. In front of her on the table stands a glass filled with absinthe. They share the bench but not a glance, and that gap between two people sitting so close is the quiet centre of the picture. The canvas measures about 92 by 68 cm.

Meaning and intent

At its first showing in 1876 critics called the picture ugly and disgusting. Shown in London in 1893 under its new title, it caused even greater controversy. English critics found the people and the drink shockingly degraded, and Victorians such as William Blake Richmond and Walter Crane saw it as a blow to morality. Many read it as a warning against absinthe and against the French. George Moore first called it a lesson, but later regretted that and wrote that the picture is merely a work of art, with nothing to do with drink or sociology.

Legacy

The painting was seen at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877, then not again until an auction in 1892, where it was once more mocked. Surprisingly, its early owners were British: the Brighton collector Captain Henry Hill bought it in 1876 from a London dealer, and after his death the Scottish dealer Alexander Reid bought it for his client Arthur Kay, who was unsure about it and sold it to a Paris dealer in 1893. Today it belongs to the permanent collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.