Music in the Tuileries

Manet's first major painting of contemporary Parisian life, completed in 1862. A fashionable crowd at an open-air concert in the Tuileries Gardens — curiously, no musicians are visible. Manet focuses entirely on the social spectacle of the audience.

A group portrait in disguise: recognizable figures include Baudelaire, Offenbach, Gautier, and Manet himself at the far left as the flâneur. This blurring of portraiture and scene-painting was revolutionary.

When exhibited in 1863, the loose, sketch-like technique provoked fierce hostility. Some visitors threatened to destroy the canvas. Yet this looseness proved enormously influential on the Impressionists.