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Audio Stop 220

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Against a hilly landscape and on a patch of dirt, five people wearing tattered clothing gather around a bearded man who holds a violin in his lap in this horizontal painting. Most of them have pale skin. Starting from the left is a barefoot young woman holding a blond baby to her chest. She faces our right, and her chestnut-brown hair hides her profile. She wears a black shirt over a calf-length skirt streaked with slate and aquamarine blue. To the right two young boys face us. The boy on the left of that pair wears a loose white shirt tucked into tan-colored pants and an upturned wide-brimmed hat. The boy next to him has short brown hair and is dressed in a black and brown vest and pants over a bone-white shirt. His right arm, to our left, is slung across the shoulders of the blond boy and he looks off to our right with dark, unfocused eyes. The man who holds the violin is to our right of center. He sits on a stone with his body facing our left, but he turns to look at us with dark eyes under heavy brows. He has tan skin, dark gray, curly hair, and a trimmed silvery gray beard. A wrinkle under one eye suggests he may smile slightly at us. He wears a loose brown cloak with a ragged bottom hem, teal-blue stockings, and black shoes. He holds a violin on his lap like a guitar. One hand fingers a chord on the neck of the violin, which comes toward us, and the other hand holds the bow and plucks a string. A sand-colored bag with a strap lies at his feet. Two men stand to our right of the musician. One wears a tall black top hat, a brown cloak, gray pants, and black shoes. His face is loosely and indistinctly painted but he has a beard. Finally, the sixth person is a man who stands along the right side of the painting and is cut off by that edge. He wears a turban, a black polka-dotted scarf, and a long black cloak or coat. One hand clutches the scarf and the other rests on a wooden cane by his side. His chin and long, light-colored beard tuck back against the scarf, and he looks off to our left with dark eyes. There are loosely painted olive and forest-green leaves in the upper left corner. The landscape beyond is painted with indistinct areas of muted green, blue, and brown. Bits of azure-blue sky peek through puffy white and gray clouds overhead. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “ed. Manet 1862.”

Edouard Manet

The Old Musician, 1862

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 89

Housing advocate Jesse Rabinowitz from the nonprofit Miriam’s Kitchen and curator and head of French paintings Mary Morton explore the marginalized individuals at the center of Manet’s monumental painting.  

Read full audio transcript

NARRATOR:
French artist Édouard Manet made this painting in 1862, when Paris was in the midst of extraordinary upheaval. As part of an ambitious urban renewal, those on the margins of society - people like those we see here - were driven out of the city center to accommodate the rebuilding program. Here’s Mary Morton, Curator of French paintings:

MARY MORTON:
It is epically scaled. So this was a major public statement that he's putting together here. And, I would argue, a political and a social statement. He's just basically saying, particularly with that old musician at the center looking directly out at the visitor, “what about us?”  

JESSE RABINOWITZ:
I think by the mere fact that Manet chose to paint these people, he is calling importance to them and expressing their humanity and their right to live with dignity and respect.  

JESSE RABINOWITZ:
My name is Jesse Rabinowitz and I live and work in Washington, D.C.  I'm the Senior Manager for Advocacy and Policy at Miriam’s Kitchen, where we work to end chronic homelessness in D.C.  

JESSE RABINOWITZ:
In this picture, I see a lot of loneliness and longing for connection, especially in the musician’s face, but also in the boys’ faces. And when I speak with folks who live outside in D.C., I commonly hear how isolating and lonely they feel, few people, if anybody, stops to say “hi”, to check in, to acknowledge them as human beings. I think Manet is reminding us of our collective responsibility towards all of our neighbors and is forcing us to look people who we might otherwise choose not to look at directly in the eye, directly in the face.   

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