Cafe Society

Presenting over 55 works by a broad cross-section of major and lesser-known names in French and expatriate American art, the volume looks at the changing role of cafes as gathering places for a new type of urban bourgeois clientele

Paris in the late 19th century witnessed an explosion in cafes, brasseries, and restaurants, as well as a host of musical and performance spaces, that became social gathering spots for a wide range of artists, writers, intellectuals, political activists, performers and hangers-on. These cafes included Cafe Guerbois in Avenue de Clichy, frequented by Manet and Degas; Cafe-concert des Ambassadeurs in the Jardins des Champs Elysees, a favourite haunt of Jean Beraud; and Le Lapin Agile the informal cabaret in Montmartre, closely associated with the struggling modernist artist Picasso.