Knife Grinder, Rue Mosnier

Knife Grinder, Rue Mosnier, painted in 1878 and now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, documents a working-class street tradesman on the Rue Mosnier — the street of Manet's Paris studio. He produced several views from his studio window that year, combining the Impressionist practice of capturing everyday urban life with his characteristic social observation. A knife grinder working the pedal of his portable sharpening wheel was a familiar urban figure in nineteenth-century Paris, part of the city's informal economy of itinerant tradespeople whose cries were part of the street's daily soundscape. Manet's attention to such figures contrasted with his more famous café interiors and fashionable subjects.

Oil on canvas with the spontaneous brushwork Manet developed by the late 1870s — the knife grinder's bent figure and revolving wheel captured in a few decisive strokes, the cobblestones and building facades around him suggested rather than described. The street-level viewpoint places the viewer among the passers-by.