Au Moulin de la Galette. Madeleine

Ramon Casas i Carbó was a Catalan artist. Living through a turbulent time in the history of his native Barcelona, he was known as a portraitist, sketching and painting the intellectual, economic, and political elite of Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, and beyond. He was also known for his paintings of crowd scenes, ranging from the audience at a bullfight, to the assembly for an execution, to rioters in the Barcelona streets. Also a graphic designer, his posters and postcards helped to define the Catalan art movement known as "modernisme".

Cafés were one of the favorite subjects of the paintings created in Paris in the late nineteenth century. It was a theme that presented a slightly scandalous environment and unsavory characters; a drinking and smoking woman, alone in a café, had a pretty clear message. Casas recalled here Manet, both in iconography and interpretation. Madeleine Boisguillaume, who was a model here, posed also for Toulouse-Lautrec and Manet.