A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Un bar aux Folies Bergère) by Édouard Manet: 1882 | Oil on canvas | Courtauld Gallery, London
I can remember one of my lecturers at college exclaiming with frustration that he had gone all the way to Paris to see the Impressionists when the movement’s best works were right next door at the Courtauld Gallery. As a skint student I wasn’t likely to get to Paris anytime soon, so I made do with this little gem of gallery that was free to students and the above painting was one of my favourites.
I loved the details - the Bass red triangle logo on the bottles that is still in use today, the wonderfully painted satsumas, the way the light plays off the glassware and you can just about see the green boots of trapeze artist in the top left corner. Yet, there is something unnerving about it. The bar at the Folies-Bergere was a place where sex-workers met clients. Barmaids were employed to serve drinks, but they were extremely vulnerable. I wonder if it is her position leaning on the bar, filling a gap, like she’s another object on offer, which made and still makes me uncomfortable.
It is the mirrored back of the bar that is really weird. We see the theatre audience’s reflection and presumably, her own displaced reflection on the right. It is not where it should naturally be. She looks quite different from the back, much less glamourous, and the man in the top hat is disturbingly close. It takes a moment to consider whether we, staring at the painting, are indeed the man in the top hat. Are we seeing through his eyes? Are we even seeing through his beer goggles?
What kept me coming back to this painting was her expression. It is hard to read. Is it weary resignation? Is she trying to dissociate herself for survival? Is it sadness? Is it loneliness? In reality, would we worry about the feelings of a barmaid in a sea of all these faces? There were times as a young person in the capital (where I did work as a waitress for a year) I could identify with her. The redeeming feature is that Manet notices her and has immortalized her in this painting.
I think of how vulnerable Hagar was in Genesis and how she was used by those around her. God notices her in the desert and gives her not dissimilar promises to Abraham. Amazingly, she names God as El Roi - The God who sees me. She, the vulnerable one, gets to name who God is.
Today, notice the expression and feelings of shop-workers, receptionists, waiters and maybe remember that the person on the other end of a phone is human and if you feel lost in a sea of faces today, know this, God sees and knows you - not somebody else’s version of you - the real you.
Suzanne Nockels
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