Chez Tortoni
A man writing at a café table — set at the Café Tortoni on the Boulevard des Italiens, a Paris institution that has since vanished.
Tortoni
The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.
Chez Tortoni — at a glance
- Artist
- Édouard Manet (1832–1883)
- Year
- c. 1875
- Movement
- Impressionism / Realism
- Place
- Café Tortoni, Boulevard des Italiens, Paris
- Viewpoint
- A corner of a famous café that closed in 1893 — the building is gone
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 26 × 34 cm
- Now at
- Stolen 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; not recovered
Overview
Chez Tortoni is a small, freely brushed café scene by Édouard Manet, painted about 1875. It shows a fashionable man in a top hat seated at a marble-topped table, a glass beside him, looking up from a sheet of paper on which he has been writing, pen in hand. It is oil on canvas, about 26 by 34 cm.
Since March 1990 the painting has been missing: it was one of thirteen works taken in the unsolved robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and its frame was left behind on a chair.
Where was Chez Tortoni painted?
Scholarship The Café Tortoni stood on the Boulevard des Italiens, on the grands boulevards of Paris — from the 1830s to the 1880s one of the most celebrated cafés in the city, famous for its ices and as a haunt of writers, dandies and artists. Manet was a regular. Tortoni closed in 1893 and the building is gone, so the setting no longer exists; the picture records a corner of a place that has vanished.
What is in the painting?
The man is set slightly off-centre against a warm, sketchy background of café wall and window light. His dark coat, pale gloves and grey hat are laid in with a few sure strokes; the marble table, the glass and the white paper catch the light. His expression, glancing up as if interrupted, is the only incident.
Look closely
The pen and paper
He looks up from a half-written sheet, pen still in hand — caught mid-letter.
The few strokes of dress
Dark coat, pale gloves and grey top hat, each laid in with a minimum of paint.
The marble table
The café's marble top and a single glass catch the window light.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A single figure, broadly brushed, caught mid-action at his table — closer to a rapid oil sketch than a finished picture.
Scholarship Manet works alla prima, letting the ground show through and reducing the café to a few tones. The looseness is the point: the man is a passing type of the boulevards, noted quickly, the way Manet noted the city's life throughout the 1870s.
History & provenance
The painting was acquired by Isabella Stewart Gardner for her Boston museum. It was stolen on 18 March 1990 with twelve other works and remains missing; the museum keeps the empty frame on display and a reward is outstanding.
Sources
- Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston — record of the 1990 theft and the missing works (incl. Manet, ‘Chez Tortoni’)
- Ann Coffin Hanson, ‘Manet and the Modern Tradition’ literature on the boulevard café subjects
Related paintings
More by Édouard Manet
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
The Railway
Music in the Tuileries
