The Théâtre du Gymnase

Painted in 1856 and held in the Alte Nationalgalerie, 'The Théâtre du Gymnase' documents Menzel's extended engagement with Paris during one of his several visits to the French capital. The Théâtre du Gymnase on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle was one of Paris's most fashionable middle-class theatres in the Second Empire, famous for its comic and sentimental plays. Menzel's observation of the theatre — the audience as much as the performance — continues his sustained interest in the social theatre of bourgeois leisure, whether in Prussian ballrooms or Parisian playhouses. The subject connects to the theatrical subjects that Daumier and later Degas would pursue, and Menzel's early engagement with it shows his alertness to the same modern social subjects that French painters were simultaneously exploring.

Menzel renders the theatre interior through the complex lighting conditions of gas-lit stage and audience lighting, distinguishing the intense focused light on performers from the more general warm luminosity of the auditorium.