Where is The Old Musician displayed?

This early Manet work is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Who are the people in The Old Musician?

Manet painted outcasts from 1860s Paris: street performers, ragpickers, and displaced people affected by the city's modernization under Haussmann.

Why is The Old Musician significant?

It's one of Manet's largest and most ambitious early works, showing his blend of Old Master tradition with modern subjects, a formula that influenced Impressionism.

Where Is The Old Musician? See It at National Gallery of Art

Édouard Manet painted this monumental canvas in 1862, one of his largest works. An old street musician sits surrounded by outcasts: a ragpicker, a gypsy girl, street children, and a wandering Jew. They gather in a barren landscape on the outskirts of Paris.

Manet drew on Old Master compositions, particularly Velázquez's groupings of marginal figures. But his subject matter was modern: the displaced people pushed to society's edges by Baron Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris.

This early work shows Manet developing the style that would make him the father of modern painting. It hangs at the National Gallery of Art.

The Old Musician

Details

Where to See It

The Artist

More by Édouard Manet

Lola de Valence

The barque of Dante (Copy after Delacroix)

Portrait of Monsieur and Madame Auguste Manet

The absinthe drinker

Also at National Gallery of Art

Gian Federico Madruzzo Oil Canvas Giovanni Battista[1]

Dancer in pink dress

Holy Family

The Harbor at Lorient

Related Impressionism Works

Water Lilies (Nymphéas)

Woman with a Parasol

Luncheon of the Boating Party

Two Sisters (On the Terrace)

Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1

Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies

Luncheon of the Boating Party

Impression, Sunrise

About The Old Musician

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