To my mind this painting has the importance for its period that Renoir's Moulin de la Galette (1876) was to have for its own epoch. Certain admirable features in this canvas strike us immediately: the exquisite gradations of tone, the general harmony, and above all, the way in which the artist has shown his figures on several different planes. It is a remarkable crowd study. The artistic society of Paris during the Second Empire as seen by one of the avant-garde is before us, taking the air under the trees.
Manet painted this picture in the Tuileries late one spring. (According to Tabarant, the date 1862, which is in a different color, was added later.) "Curious passers-by stopped to watch the elegantly dressed artist prepare his canvas and proceed with his painting," wrote Antonin Proust. At that time Baudelair was Manet's constant companion. "He plasters it on," Manet used to say (it was at the time when Baudelaire used to make up his face outrageously), "but what genius lies beneath!" Baudelaire was in fact the instigator of this modern study, and it is thought that he inspired its general tonality.
Several of the people in the painting are recognizable. Manet's friend Albert de Balleroy, a painter of genre and hunting scenes, stands at the left wearing a monocle; behind him, at the extreme left, we catch a glimpse of Manet himself. Zacharie Astruc, critic, poet, and sculptor, is seated slightly further back, and the man behind him with the moustache, seen in three-quarter view, is the journalist, Aurelien Scholl. Moving to the right, we next see Fantin-Latour, facing outward, then Baudelaire in profile, the bearded Theophile Gautier, and Champfleury. The seated lady who wears a veil and holds a fan is Mme Le Josne, the wife of a senior officer, while the woman in a blue hat is Mme de Loubens, the wife of a master from the school in the rue de Rocher. Eugene Manet, the artist's brother, stands in the center with his hands behind his back, and to his right sits the composer Offenback. All these people - "sparking boulevard society," as Moreau-Nelaton called them - were habitues of Tortoni's or the Cafe Guerbois, the two places Manet frequented.
This remarkable work leads us on from wonder to wonder. There is always something new to be discovered. I cannot understand Huysmans, who jotted down the following note on this canvas in vatelogue I have seen, "Detestable! Merely commonplace. In any case Manet never could paint crowds; he arranges them stiffly according to rule. His patches of color jostle one another; they have no balance."
