In the Café

Fernand Lungren was an American painter and illustrator mostly known for his paintings of American Southwestern landscapes and scenes, as well as for New York and European city street scenes.

In 1882 he traveled to Paris, where he briefly attended classes at the famous Académie Julian (a major alternative training center to the official École des Beaux-Arts—they permitted women to study and, more importantly, draw from the nude male model). He quickly abandoned formal training, however, in favor of direct observation of the city and its people. Also, he saw French Impressionist artists at work. Here, a fashionably dressed woman sits alone and alert. Her presence is a sign of modern Paris’s changing social environment, in which café culture offered women new opportunities for leisure in public spaces. Although Lungren employed a dense, hard-edged style, his interest in modern life and the effects of light (here both gas and electric lighting) was nevertheless indebted to Impressionism.

If you would like to learn more about the French Impressionists and how they influenced other artists please check our online Mega Impressionism Course.

P.S. Parisian cafés were ubiquitous in 19th century art. Read about their most famous representations in art and what they meant for the French culture!