Description of the picture:
An old musician – Eduard Manet. 1862. Oil on canvas. 187.4 x 248.2 cm
In 1861, Manet moved to the newest studio. The location of the studio was very catchy, because not far from it was the area referred to in Paris as “little Poland.” Here lived the poor, wanderers, forced to wander to different areas of the city in accordance with the work carried out by the authorities on the redevelopment of the city. Watching these poor people, Mane came up with the idea of creating the painting “The Old Musician”, in which he embodied many images of his new acquaintances.
In the center of the plot is an old musician with a violin in his hands, a young girl with a child in her arms and two boys (one of them is the son of the artist Leon) gathered around him, two adults are standing a little at a distance. History has preserved the name of the man with whom Manet wrote a colorful musician – this is gypsy Jean Logren, who really was a representative of this profession and even headed a local orchestra consisting of gypsies. And in a gentleman in a high cylinder, an attentive viewer recognizes the character of another famous work of the artist – “Absinthe Lover”.
The canvas for the first time found its buyer at the posthumous sale of Mane’s paintings, changing many private collections, the work, passing the Austrian gallery, ended up in the National Museum of Washington, where it has been exhibited to this day."