A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

Lore & Background

The central figure stands before a mirror, although critics—accusing Manet of ignorance of perspective and alleging various impossibilities in the painting—have debated this point since the earliest reviews were published. In 2000, however, art historian Malcolm Park proved the perspective was physically possible by staging a reconstruction shown to reproduce the scene as painted by Manet.

Reader's Guide

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère is significant as Manet's last major work, encapsulating his commitment to realism and his complex engagement with perspective and mirror imagery. The painting has generated extensive scholarly debate, particularly regarding its spatial logic, which was only resolved in 2000 by Malcolm Park's reconstruction. Its mirror structure invites comparison with Velázquez's Las Meninas, a connection explored by Michel Foucault. The work also serves as a social document, with details such as the barmaid Suzon, the oranges symbolizing prostitution, the Bass Pale Ale bottles reflecting anti-German sentiment, and the trapeze artist's feet indicating the nightclub's entertainment. Its legacy extends into ballet, with Ninette de Valois's 1934 ballet Bar aux Folies-Bergère, and into modern art, influencing John Brack's The Bar (1954), Jeff Wall's Picture for Women (1979), and even appearing in the 1988 film Coming to America. The painting remains a touchstone for discussions of the male gaze, the role of the viewer, and the representation of modern urban life.

Did You Know?

• The painting originally belonged to composer Emmanuel Chabrier, a close friend of Manet, and hung over his piano.
• Art historian Malcolm Park proved in 2000 that the painting's perspective is physically possible by staging a reconstruction.
• The barmaid was a real person named Suzon who worked at the Folies-Bergère in the early 1880s.
• The beer bottles depicted are Bass Pale Ale, identified by the red triangle on the label, interpreted as a sign of anti-German sentiment after the Franco-Prussian War.

The Banana Skirt and the Jazz Age

Few images capture the exuberance of the 1920s quite like a dancer strutting across the Folies Bergère stage in nothing but a short skirt of artificial bananas and a single beaded necklace. That was Josephine Baker in the 1927 revue Un vent de folie, a performance that seized Paris by the throat and turned her into an overnight phenomenon. The costume transcended mere spectacle; it became a lasting emblem of the Jazz Age, a visual shorthand for the decade's wild energy and liberation. Parisian artists and intellectuals, intoxicated by her presence, piled on epithets with abandon—Black Venus, Black Pearl, Bronze Venus, Creole Goddess—each label a testament to how she defied every category they had for a performer. That same year she also made history on screen, becoming the first Black woman to headline a major motion picture with Siren of the Tropics, a French silent film directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant. Between the stage and the silver screen, Baker had written herself into the cultural record as a singular force whose image would outlast the decade that minted it.

St. Louis: A Childhood Forged in Poverty and Fear

Josephine Baker entered the world as Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri, into a family marked by poverty and racial complexity. Her mother, Carrie, carried both African American and Native American ancestry, and the household on 212 Targee Street in the Chestnut Valley neighborhood sat in a rough stretch near Union Station where rooming houses, brothels, and apartments lacking indoor plumbing defined daily life. Young Josephine grew up hungry and poorly clothed, picking up street smarts by playing among the railroad yards. By age eight she was working as a live-in domestic for white families, and one employer burned her hands as punishment for using too much soap. The year 1917 brought a trauma she would carry for life: at eleven, she stood on the west bank of the Mississippi and watched the East St. Louis riots set fire to Black homes, families fleeing across the bridge with nothing but the clothes on their backs. She dropped out of school at twelve, waited tables at thirteen, and for a time survived as a street child, sleeping in cardboard shelters and scavenging garbage cans for food before joining a street-performance group called the Jones Family Band.

The Spy Behind the Spotlight

Behind the glittering stage persona lay a woman who, during the Second World War, risked her life as an operative for the French Resistance. She also collaborated with Britain's Secret Intelligence Service and the United States Office of Strategic Services, a dual-intelligence role that remained largely hidden from public view until 2020, when French authorities finally declassified the relevant documents. Her wartime service was no quiet footnote; it earned her the Resistance Medal from the French Committee of National Liberation, the Croix de Guerre from the French military, and the rank of Knight of the Legion of Honour, personally conferred by General Charles de Gaulle. In 1937, after marrying French industrialist Jean Lion, she had formally renounced her American citizenship and taken French nationality, deepening her commitment to the country she now called home. She adopted twelve children of various backgrounds, whom she lovingly called the Rainbow Tribe, and raised them in France. When she sang 'J'ai deux amours'—'I have two loves: my country and Paris'—the words were not mere stagecraft but a declaration of the dual identity she had built through sacrifice and conviction.

The Panthéon and a Life Beyond the Stage

Josephine Baker's refusal to entertain segregated American audiences stood as a quiet but firm act of civil-rights defiance throughout her career, and her broader contributions to the movement in the United States earned her a place in its history. In 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., she was offered an unofficial leadership role in the civil rights struggle but turned it down, citing her concern for the safety and well-being of her children. She died on April 12, 1975, and her final resting place is in the Monaco Cemetery. Yet her story did not end there. On November 30, 2021, France made the extraordinary decision to induct her into the Panthéon in Paris, the nation's most prestigious memorial, making her the first Black woman ever to receive that distinction. Because her body remains in Monaco, a cenotaph was placed in vault 13 of the Panthéon crypt as a symbolic resting place. The gesture, arriving nearly half a century after her death, acknowledged at last the full weight of a life that spanned the Folies Bergère stage, the corridors of wartime intelligence, and the long fight for dignity across two continents.

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