The Drinkers

As a real city man, Jean Beraud tried with his pictures to capture the real vitality of urban life. He made portraits of elegant society ladies, but also of working-class women, and pictures of folk dancing and absinthe drinkers in the bars and cafes. He painted many scenes of Parisian daily life during the Belle Époque in a style that stands somewhere between the academic art of the Salon and that of the Impressionists. He received the Légion d'Honneur in 1894. Béraud's paintings often included truth-based humor and mockery of late 19th-century Parisian life, along with frequent appearances of biblical characters in then-contemporary situations.