Plum Brandy

Plum Brandy, also known as The Plum, depicts a woman seated alone at a table in a café, in a lethargic pose. The woman may be a prostitute, waiting for her client or for the waiter to bring her a spoon, she appears dreamy and distant. She holds an unlit cigarette and her plum soaked in brandy appears untouched. That dessert was a specialty of Parisian cafés at the time.

Plum may be a reference to the woman's sexuality, as the fruit was later used in James Joyce's Ulysses. Manet may have based the painting on observations at the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes on the Place Pigalle in Paris. The background (the decorative grille and its gold frame), however, does not match other depictions of the café, and suggests the painting was made in Manet’s studio, where he is known to have had a café-style marble table on iron legs. 

The model is the actress Ellen Andrée, who was also depicted with Marcellin Desboutin in the similar 1876 painting L'Absinthe (or In a Café) by Edgar Degas (check our Archive to look at it). The similarities between the two paintings suggest that Manet's The Plum may be a response to Degas's work. Andrée also appears in Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1881 painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party.

P.S. You might remember that the Luncheon of the Boating Party was shown in the movie Amélie; such a lovely story! Read it here!