The Rue Mosnier Dressed with Flags

The Rue Mosnier Dressed with Flags, painted in 1878 and now at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, depicts the street below Manet's studio window decorated with tricolor flags for the Exposition Universelle — France's great international exhibition celebrating recovery from the Franco-Prussian War. The same street appears in several of Manet's 1878 canvases under different conditions; here the festive flags create a rare note of public spectacle in his generally intimate urban observations. The contrast between the flag-draped buildings celebrating national triumph and the one-legged man on crutches visible in some versions of this subject adds a disquieting ambiguity — France celebrating while its wounded from 1870-71 remained in the streets.

Oil on canvas with the tricolor flags providing vivid vertical accents of red, white, and blue against the gray-beige building facades. Manet rendered the flags with broad, slashing strokes suggesting their movement in the wind, while the street below is populated with abbreviated figures whose specific identities dissolve into the urban crowd.