Music in the Tuileries

Édouard Manet painted this Music in the Tuileries in 1862, his first major picture of contemporary Parisian life. The scene shows a fashionable crowd gathered for an outdoor concert in the Tuileries gardens near the Louvre. No musicians are visible. The subject is the social spectacle itself: elegant women in crinolines, top-hatted men, children with hoops.

Manet included himself at the far left, partly cut off by the canvas edge. His brother Eugène wears white trousers in the foreground. Poet Charles Baudelaire stands against a tree. Composer Jacques Offenbach sits nearby. The painting doubles as a group portrait of the artist's social circle, anchored in a specific moment of Second Empire Paris.

When first exhibited in 1863, the thick brushstrokes and modern subject matter outraged viewers. Some threatened to destroy the canvas. Today it hangs at the National Gallery in London, recognized as a landmark in the development of Impressionism. The painting measures 76.2 by 118.1 centimeters.