From the moment it was first exhibited in 1882 at the Salon de Paris - once the greatest art event in the world - Edouard Manet’s last major work, A Bar At The Folies-Bergere, has caused a stir.
Not just because of the size of the landscape - at just over 3ft high and more than 4ft wide, it was larger than was fashionable at the time - but also because of all the many questions it raises.
Why does the immaculately-dressed barmaid look so cripplingly bored? Who is that shadowy man in the mirror?
How on earth did such a great artist get the perspective so wrong? And why has a French Impressionist included two bottles of British pale ale on this Parisian bar top?
‘Books and books have been written about this painting and what Manet was trying to communicate,’ says Ernst Vegelin, director of the Courtauld Gallery in London, where the masterpiece is a prize exhibit.
Édouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, first exhibited in 1882, is the star attraction at the redeveloped Courtauld Gallery in London
Dr Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen (left) and Maerit Rausing Director of the Courtauld Gallery, Professor Deborah Swallow (right) pose in front of artist Edouard Manet's last major painting
‘It never ceases to enthral and weave its spell.’
Or attract thousands of visitors from around the world to gaze at it and ponder its mysteries, as no doubt will happen once again as the gallery finally reopens today after a three-year, £50 million top-to-bottom redevelopment, including a lead donation from the Blavatnik family.
Thanks to the pandemic and the very inconvenient discovery of a medieval cesspit in the basement, the work took longer than planned.
But initial reviews suggest it was clearly worth the wait: the Courtauld has been transformed by the award-winning firm of architects, Witherford Watson Mann, from a poky, oft-forgotten gallery into one of the capital’s most spectacular artistic havens.
Alongside the Cezannes, Van Goghs, Gauguins, Renoirs and Monets, there are dazzling new commissions and donations — including a new collection of Kandinsky’s drawings.
But Manet’s work, completed even as he was dying from syphilis, is still the main attraction in the gallery’s dramatic Great Room.
The Courtauld Gallery in London is re-opening to the public on Friday following a modernisation project
A gallery employee poses alongside the artwork A Bar at the Folies-Bergere
‘It is the great icon amongst the many icons of the collection,’ says Vegelin.
‘We wanted to preserve the moment of surprise, so it’s not the first thing that you see, but it emerges on the left in a moment of, I hope, astonishment and delight.’
It will no doubt spark afresh all the questions surrounding the painting’s rich complexity. Here, we attempt to decode some of its secrets...
The folies was a risque business
Built as an opera house in the newly-modernised 9th Arrondissement of Paris and opened in 1869, the Folies-Bergere signified everything modern and risqué about Parisian society in the late 19th century.
A venue for anything and everything — from operettas, gymnastics, trapeze acts and naked revues — and enjoyed by the great and good, and everyone in between.
Manet adored it and spent many happy, drunken hours there with fellow artists, musicians, and writers.
Aware that he was dying, the painting was his final farewell, not just to the Folies, but to a decadent world he loved.
Why does she look so bored?
Suzon - the model who posed for Manet - was a real barmaid whom he doubtless met while propped at this very same bar.
But the tired-looking woman he actually painted, with that blank and unknowable expression who stares back at us with more than a hint of confrontation - was more a figment of his imagination than reality.
Is she bored of her job, of the long hours, of the noise and bustle of rich Parisian cabaret-goers who probably pay little heed to her?
As well as Manet's last major work, artworks on show at the gallery include pieces by Van Gogh and Renoir
Or perhaps she was simply exhausted at the end of another long night of serving customers, one after another?
Some art critics interpret her demeanour differently: this is a woman who is emotionally detached, numbed even — thanks to some of her more demanding patrons to whom she might be required to offer more than just liquid refreshment.
Clues the barmaid was a prostitute
It would have been highly unusual to make a barmaid, let alone a prostitute, the central focus of such an important painting in the late 19th century.
But art scholar and author, Kelly Grovier, points to myriad