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A woman sits in a Paris café beside a glass of green absinthe, staring blankly into space, while a man in a hat beside her looks away. Painted in 1875–1876, Edgar Degas's L'Absinthe shocked London viewers in 1893 and became an icon of urban loneliness.
In this article
A café in Montmartre
Edgar Degas painted L'Absinthe, originally titled Dans un café (In a Café), in 1875–1876. The scene is set in the café de la Nouvelle-Athènes on the Place Pigalle in Paris, where Degas, Manet and other artists of the avant-garde met to talk and argue.
The two figures are not drinkers but friends of Degas who agreed to pose: the actress Ellen Andrée and the painter and engraver Marcellin Desboutin. Both later complained that the painting had harmed their reputations.
The woman
The woman sits slumped with her shoulders drooping and her feet splayed, wearing a hat and a pale dress. Her face is blank, her eyes unfocused, lost in a dull stupor. In front of her stands a glass of absinthe, the green spirit popular in Paris, which was blamed for addiction, madness and moral decline.
Detail 1
An empty stare
The woman stares into space with a dazed, absent expression, isolated even in the café.
Detail 2The glass of absinthe
A glass of cloudy green absinthe stands before her, the drink that gave the painting its later title.
The man
Beside her sits a bohemian man in a hat, smoking a pipe and looking away out of the painting. The two do not speak or look at each other. Their isolation, side by side, is the subject of the painting.
Detail 3The man with the pipe
The man beside her looks away, smoking his pipe, as indifferent to her as she is to him.
The empty tables
The composition is daring. The tables form a zigzag of empty surfaces in the foreground, pushing the figures to the upper right, as if the viewer were seated at a neighbouring table. The off-centre framing was inspired by Japanese prints and photography, and it creates a sense of a moment seen by chance.
Detail 4The zigzag of tables
Empty table tops fill the foreground in a zigzag, pushing the figures to the side and placing the viewer at a nearby table.
A scandal in London
When the painting was shown in London in 1893, British critics attacked it as a vulgar picture of drunkenness and a lesson in degradation. The debate made it famous. Today it is seen as one of Degas's most powerful images of modern life, its isolation, routine and melancholy.
Degas and modern life
Degas was one of the founders of the Impressionist exhibitions, but he preferred to call himself a Realist. He was less interested in landscapes and outdoor light than in the people of modern Paris: dancers, laundresses, milliners, jockeys, and the customers of cafés and theatres. He observed them with a cool, almost detached eye, often from unusual angles, cutting figures at the edge of the picture as in photographs or Japanese prints. L'Absinthe is one of his most powerful images of urban life, showing not the glamour of Paris but its loneliness and routine. Its frankness influenced later artists, from Toulouse-Lautrec to Edward Hopper, who also painted lonely figures in cafés and diners.
Seeing L'Absinthe
The painting measures about 92 by 68 centimetres and is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
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Who are the people in L'Absinthe?
The models were the actress Ellen Andrée and the painter Marcellin Desboutin, friends of Degas.
Where is the café in L'Absinthe?
It is the café de la Nouvelle-Athènes on the Place Pigalle in Paris, a meeting place for artists.
What is absinthe?
Absinthe is a strong green spirit flavoured with wormwood, very popular in 19th-century Paris and later banned in France.
Where is L'Absinthe?
It is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Sources and further reading
- Musée d'Orsay, collection notes on In a Café, also called L'Absinthe
- Richard Kendall, Degas: Beyond Impressionism (1996)
- Ronald Pickvance, essays on Degas and the café
