At Father Lathuille

Chez le père Lathuille shows an elegant lady of a certain age just finishing a lonely luncheon on the terrace of an expensive restaurant. Unexpectedly, a much younger man has come over to her table. She does not ask him to sit down, so he crouches at her feet, looking up at her with the eyes of an adoring spaniel while fingering the stem of her glass of champagne and draping one arm around the back of her chair.

With his intrusive manners, his slicked-down hair, moustache, sideburns and open collar he may be a student or more probably a gigolo – but he is certainly no gentleman. The restaurant Chez le Père Lathuille was almost next door to the Café Guerbois, Manet's "headquarters". The models for this picture were the son of the proprietor, Louis Gauthier-Lathuille and Judith French, a relative of the composer Offenbach.