Édouard Manet
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
1882
Édouard Manet's 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère' (1882), painted the year before his death, depicts the barmaid Suzon at the Paris music hall, serving from behind a marble counter laden with bottles and a bowl of mandarins. In the mirror behind her, a geometrically impossible reflection shows her in conversation with a male customer — a spatial puzzle that frames the painting as a meditation on modern spectacle, consumption, and alienation. A permanent cornerstone of the Courtauld Gallery in London.
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