Plum Brandy by Manet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: Plum Brandy

Artist: Edouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris)

Date: ca. 1877

Geography: Country of Origin France

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 29 × 19 3/4 in. (73.6 × 50.2 cm)
Framed: 34 1/2 × 25 1/4 × 2 1/4 in. (87.6 × 64.1 × 5.7 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (1971.85.1)

Accession Number: MD.048


Following Degas’s In a Café (The Absinthe Drinker), on view nearby, Manet evoked the same setting of the Nouvelle-Athènes and selected the same model, the actress Ellen Andrée, for his own café scene. Although centered on a woman alone with her drink, which in popular imagery of the time often implied moral indecency, her identity is ambiguous. Resting her head in hand, as she ignores her brandy-soaked plum and unlit cigarette, she gazes wistfully into the distance, conveying a sense of urban isolation similar to that evoked in Degas’s painting.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/844787