Un Bar Aux Folies Analysis Essay

In this task, I am writing an analysis about Un Bar aux Folies- Bergère by French painter Édouard Manet. I will record my initial reaction, thoughts, and feelings on the selected artwork. I will also discuss interesting aspects of the work and examine the historical context of the period in which the work was painted. To conclude, I will present the knowledge I have gained and how this assignment have altered my thought regarding the selected work.
A. Initial Reaction
A1. Initial thoughts and feelings
A barmaid dressed in black posing behind a bar and standing in the center. Seems to be a young woman, surrounded by bottles, pale, detached, looking down, isolated and sad; there is a velvet ribbon with a locket around her throat. Her reflection in the mirror has displaced to the right as if she was looking at someone or something in specific, perhaps the middle-aged man at the bar. I can see the reflection of his head and upper chest. He stares at the barmaid; his eyes are looking dark long into hers. Little green boots in the upper left-hand corner are

Manet had an upper-class background, but also lived a bohemian life, and was determined to outrage the French Salon public with his indifference for academic conventions and his extraordinarily modern image of urban life. He related with the Impressionists; he was undoubtedly a significant influence on them. Recently, critics have acknowledged that he also learned from the Realism and Naturalism of his French contemporaries, and even from seventeenth-century Spanish painting. This interest in Old Masters and contemporary Realism provided him the basis for his revolutionary approach. Manet's modernity lies above all in his enthusiasm to update older genres of the painting by introducing new content or by modifying the conventional elements. He did so with an acute sensitivity to historical tradition and contemporary