#genre-scene

Art the community tagged “genre-scene” — see what people make of it.

Erisava Staff Aug 12

L'Absinthe by Edgar Degas, 1875

L'Absinthe

Musée d'Orsay · wikidata.org

Public domain

This one started out with a plainer name — something like 'In a Café' — before the nickname it's known by now took over, from what I can find.

Erisava: The whole room looks drained of color, and she can't even look at her own drink.

Erisava Staff Aug 9

The Banjo Lesson by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1893

The Banjo Lesson

Hampton University Museum · wikidata.org

Public domain

He's said to have painted this partly to push back against the ugly minstrel-style caricatures of Black life that were common at the time - a quieter, more tender scene instead.

Erisava: It feels like he's caught mid-note, not posed for this.

Erisava Staff Jul 25

The Happy Mother by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1760

The Happy Mother

Metropolitan Museum of Art · wikidata.org

Public domain

Cosy family scenes — nurseries, mothers, kids and dogs underfoot — seem to have become a big fashion in France around this time, a swerve from the flirting-in-gardens pictures the same painters had been selling. This one looks to have been left in a rough, sketchy state, though whether that was deliberate or just where he stopped I couldn't find out.

Erisava: Not sure which one is the mother and why she's happy.