In the Bar by Édouard Manet

A man in a black cap smokes a pipe, his profile turned towards the right. In front of him, a pale figure bends low over a table. A tree trunk interrupts the view, while bottles and glasses bring the café almost within reach. In Édouard Manet's In the Bar, the people are close to us, but their faces and circumstances remain only partly available.

The oil painting belongs to the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Its current catalogue dates it to 1878–79 and records dimensions of 72 × 92 centimetres.^[1] Also known as The Bar and Le Bouchon, it belongs to Manet's mature exploration of café life.^[2] Its broad handling makes pose, colour and the arrangement of ordinary objects carry much of the scene.

A Profile behind a Bent Figure

The smoker's head is one of the most readily recognised forms. A broad black cap projects above his forehead, while a dark moustache and pipe interrupt the warm colour of his face. The pipe extends into the surrounding red-brown background, making the direction of the profile particularly clear.

Below the head, blue spreads across the shoulders and chest. A dark necktie and a narrow light area at the collar give some distinction to the clothing without requiring a detailed account of its construction. The figure holds together through a few strong shapes: cap, face, pipe and blue torso.

The nearer person is arranged very differently. We see a large expanse of pale clothing and a lowered head, with the face concealed. The back curves forward, and an arm extends towards the right across the table. The darker lower clothing gathers near the bottom of the composition, between the bottles and glasses.

The pale body overlaps much of the smoker's blue clothing. That overlap establishes the relative positions more firmly than any carefully drawn floor could. One person is in front of another; the nearer person's rounded back occupies the space through which we might otherwise look towards the seated man.

The Dallas Museum of Art, discussing a closely related drawing, describes this bent companion as a woman and the smoker as a worker.^[3] Those readings offer a useful alternative to seeing two anonymous gentlemen. Their postures leave their individual circumstances open.

The Tree and the Two Levels of Tables

A thick tree trunk rises close to the right edge, crossing the scene from bottom to top. Its dark, roughly marked surface creates a conspicuous obstacle between the viewer and the café. Pale and blue strokes along its sides give the trunk a texture quite different from the broad light back beside it.

The tree helps locate the scene outdoors. It also makes the viewpoint feel particular: we appear to have found an opening beside it rather than been given an unobstructed view of the drinkers. The trunk overlaps the table and divides nearby objects from one another.

Two levels of horizontal surfaces make the foreground more complex. A bottle and a small glass occupy the nearest area. Farther back, the bent figure rests over another stretch of table, with a taller glass near the right. Green-grey edges and horizontal brushstrokes distinguish these surfaces even where their exact construction is abbreviated.

The front glass is especially effective in establishing distance. Its rim, pale sides and small dark touches make a compact object against the surrounding loose paint. Behind it, the much larger sweep of the person's clothing leads upwards into the group. The eye passes from a clearly indicated glass to a body that is described through broad colour.

A second bottle stands beyond the tree at the right. It helps carry the table into the narrow remaining strip of space, preventing the trunk from becoming a simple border. Something of the café continues on the other side, although we cannot survey it fully.

Dark reflections, pale rims and small red accents suggest glass and liquid without identifying the drinks.

Blue, White and a Warm Background

The largest light area is the nearer person's back. Its apparent whiteness includes blue, grey, mauve and warm cream. Some strokes follow the slope of a shoulder; others cut across it or gather at the sleeve. From a distance, these marks join into clothing. Close up, they remain visibly separate applications of paint.

The blue torso behind it supplies a cooler, more definite field. Where pale fabric overlaps blue, the figures become easy to distinguish despite the limited attention given to faces and hands. Their relationship is made through the contact of coloured shapes as much as through outlines.

Across the upper left, the warm red-brown background provides another broad area. It changes towards orange near the smoker's profile and darkens lower down. Against it, the black cap has a clear silhouette, while the small pale marks near the pipe become unusually noticeable.

The tree and bottles bring darker verticals into this arrangement. They balance the extended horizontal strokes of the tables, while the bowed body connects the upper group with the foreground. Each major direction has a visible role: the profile turns right, the body bends forward, the tables stretch across and the trunk rises through them.

The result is legible even where detail is sparse. Manet gives a bottle its upright outline, a glass its rim and a person a characteristic pose, then allows the adjacent paint to remain open.

An Outdoor Café, with Its Location Uncertain

The older Pushkin gallery commentary places the scene in a café on Place Moncey. The NeWestMuseum reconstruction project's account instead associates it with an outdoor café near the Barrière de Clichy.^[4][2] These proposals concern a recognisable Parisian environment, but they do not establish a single securely documented address for the painting.

The tree, tables and related drawing make the outdoor setting easier to understand than the precise location. There is no wide street view or clearly legible sign to place the scene. Nor do the French title variants establish the name of a particular café.

The Pushkin commentary also records the suggestion that the canvas's sketchlike character may indicate preparation for a larger composition that was never completed.^[4] This remains an interpretation of its appearance. The freely handled surface can be appreciated without assuming that every abbreviated passage marks something Manet intended to finish differently.

Its date places that freedom late in his career, after the major paintings of the 1860s and the outdoor subjects of the following decade. The simplified figures belong to an experienced painter choosing what to emphasise. The dark profile, light back and foreground glass work together across the entire canvas.

The Related Drawing in Dallas

The Dallas Museum of Art's Le Bouchon, dated about 1878, uses ink and pencil on paper to explore a closely related grouping. Its museum account proposes that it was made in preparation for the Pushkin painting and places it alongside two pencil studies.^[3] The exact sequence of the related versions remains uncertain.

The drawing retains the black cap and pipe, the broad bent figure, the tree and the drinkware. These elements are recognisable despite a much more restricted range of tones. Much of the person's back is left as light paper, bounded by a few lines and darker strokes at the shoulder and waist.

The tree is described with uneven vertical marks. At the left, diagonal strokes establish a darker area behind the figures, while long horizontal sweeps carry the foreground across the sheet. A dark bottle stands beside a comparatively open glass. Black marks and untouched paper take on work that blue, white and warm brown perform in the oil.

Comparing them makes the painting's choice of colour more apparent. The blue torso, cream clothing and warm background give separate identities to areas that can be joined more quickly through ink. Conversely, the drawing makes the force of the arrangement especially clear: the large pale shape, upright trunk and clustered dark objects remain sufficient to organise the scene.

Dallas interprets the bent woman as presumably drunk.^[3] That is a reading of her pose within a drinking place. Her hidden face and lowered position leave room for the association, while withholding the individual history that would turn it into a documented account of a particular person.

Café Life and Other Manet Paintings

In Manet and Modern Paris, Theodore Reff places the growth of café subjects in the later 1870s within a wider artistic and literary interest in public gathering places. Cafés supplied opportunities for reading, conversation, entertainment and encounters outside the home.^[5] Manet's closely viewed figures belong to that broader world, even when a particular exchange remains difficult to explain.

The possible connection with Émile Zola's L'Assommoir has also been discussed. Both the NeWestMuseum account and Dallas relate the subject to Zola's treatment of drinking, but Dallas explicitly cautions against reading the painting as an illustration of a particular passage.^[2][3]

The Pushkin work is separate from At the Café in Winterthur and Corner of a Café-Concert in London. Those two canvases developed from parts of a larger painting, with continuing tables and surviving fingertips helping establish their connection.^[6] Their history of cutting and repainting should not be transferred to In the Bar because the pictures share café subjects.

Here the principal interruption is the painted tree. It obstructs our view within the scene, placing an ordinary part of the setting between us and the figures. It brings us close to a pipe or glass while restricting our view of the people.

From Morozov's Collection to the Pushkin Museum

The painting entered Mikhail Morozov's collection in 1900. The NeWestMuseum provenance account explains that Paul Durand-Ruel bought it for him at the Tavernier sale in Paris. It corrects an older account in which the work was thought to have passed through Sergei Shchukin's collection first.^[2]

After Morozov's death, it belonged to Margarita Morozova, whose gift brought it to the Tretyakov Gallery in 1910. It subsequently entered the State Museum of New Western Art and transferred to the Pushkin Museum in 1948.^[2][1]

The objects nearest us remain the most readily inspected. A glass rim catches the light, a dark bottle rises from the table and the pale back curves beyond them. Manet gives these ordinary forms enough definition to hold the scene together, while the smoker's averted profile and his companion's concealed face keep the people partly beyond our reach.