Tip: move over the painting to use the lens.

Beggar with a Duffle Coat (Philosopher)

Artist: Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883)
Date: 1865–67
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 187.7 × 109.9 cm (73 7/8 × 43 1/4 in.); Framed: 222.6 × 145.1 × 17.5 cm (87 5/8 × 57 1/8 × 6 7/8 in.)
Made in: France
Style: Realism
Where to see it: Art Institute of Chicago

A. A. Munger Collection · CC0 Public Domain · Art Institute of Chicago · image via Wikimedia Commons · see it at the museum ↗

Notes from the museum

This painting and Beggar with Oysters were conceived as companion pieces. Édouard Manet exhibited them together in 1872 alongside paintings of an absinthe drinker and a ragpicker (a collector and reseller of discarded fabric and other refuse) under the collective title The Philosophers . When Manet made the paintings, these “beggars,” as they were then referred to, were being pushed to the physical and social margins of Paris as the city rapidly redeveloped to make way for more bourgeois neighborhoods. Although he was born into an upper-class family, Manet was an outsider to the established French art circles and likely identified with these alienated subjects.

Text: Art Institute of Chicago (open access). Our full story for this work is coming soon.

Slow Look

The whole picture Let your eyes wander. Where do they want to rest?
The light Find the brightest spot. What is it showing you?
The edges Look at what is half cut off at the borders.
One small detail Choose one tiny thing and stay with it for a while.
The whole picture again Step back. Has it changed for you?

About Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

Painter profile →