Beggar with a Duffle Coat (Philosopher)
1865–67
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
187.7 × 109.9 cm (73 7/8 × 43 1/4 in.); Framed: 222.6 × 145.1 × 17.5 cm (87 5/8 × 57 1/8 × 6 7/8 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
95183
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This painting and Beggar with Oysters were conceived as companion pieces. Édouard Manet exhibited them together in 1872 alongside paintings of an absinthe drinker and a ragpicker (a collector and reseller of discarded fabric and other refuse) under the collective title The Philosophers. When Manet made the paintings, these “beggars,” as they were then referred to, were being pushed to the physical and social margins of Paris as the city rapidly redeveloped to make way for more bourgeois neighbor...