The Old Musician

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.