At the Père Lathuille Restaurant

Painted in 1879 and now at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tournai in Belgium, At the Père Lathuille Restaurant depicts a courtship scene in the garden restaurant of a famous Parisian establishment near the Batignolles — Manet's own neighbourhood. A young man leans toward a young woman across a restaurant table, absorbed in conversation; a waiter hovers in the background. The painting demonstrates Manet's mastery of the contemporary Parisian social scene: the garden setting, the fashionable restaurant, the flirtatious exchange are all rendered with the directness and lack of moralising that marks his treatment of modern life.

The outdoor restaurant setting floods the scene with diffused garden light — pale greens of foliage, white tablecloth, the light-coloured summer clothing of the figures. Manet renders the dappled shade with characteristic directness rather than the broken Impressionist touch. The figures' psychological interaction — the man leaning forward, the woman's distracted gaze — is conveyed through posture and expression with economical certainty.